Brno- The Czech Supreme Court (NS) cancelled an old verdict issued against then dissident and Protestant minister Jan Simsa for attacking a public official, a communist secret service (StB) agent who was searching his house.
Simsa, 78, welcomed the court decision. He said he was not angry at the StB officers and judges who had sent him behind bars. "They were under big pressure, too," he said.
A Czechoslovak court sentenced Simsa to eight months in prison in 1978.
The NS recently refused to cancel Simsa punishment, but the Constitutional Court ordered it to reopen the case, calling the attitude of the NS wrong and too legalistic.
The Constitutional Court said the trial had been clearly politically motivated.
Justice Minister Jiri Pospisil (the Civic Democratic Party, ODS) then submitted a complaint on behalf of Simsa for the violation of law.
Simsa, a signatory of the Charter 77 human rights manifesto, had a scuffle over a personal letter from the late philosopher Jan Patocka, also a dissident, with an StB officer during a house search in 1978.
The scuffle started after the StB officer seized the letter, intending to take it away.
According to the law, the officer had the right to read personal letters but not to confiscate them. The communist judges classified Simsa tussle over the letter as an assault on a public official.
Simsa said the StB agents were rude to his son and wife, and therefore he pushed into one of them who fell on the bed. He suffered no injury.
Source: http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/index_view.php?id=309153
Photo courtesy of http://aktualne.centrum.cz