Czech police arrest over 20 extremists in raid today - lawyer

The police declined to comment on the crackdown that is reportedly connected with concerts organised by the radicals.

Far-right supporters protested against the raid outside the Government Office and near a Prague police seat this evening.

Those arrested include Patrik Vondrak, chairman of the Prague branch of the controversial ultra-right Workers´ Party (DS), CTK learnt from DS member Jiri Barta.

DS chairman Tomas Vandas told CTK that the police have also detained DS deputy head Matyas Sombati, deputy editor-in-chief of the DS´s Workers´ Paper.

The police seized Sombati´s PC with the database of the Workers´ Youth members, and other personal items, Vandas said.

Referring to alleged official police information, Kubicek said the police detained six men and one woman for the same reasons as those applied within a similar raid this June.

"This is official police information I´ve received," Kubicek said.

After the raid in June, the police accused 10 suspected radicals of promoting a movement aimed to suppress people´s rights and freedoms.

The police organised crime squad (UOOZ) made searches in the extremism suspects´ homes at various places of the Czech Republic this morning.

Like in June, the home searches were ordered by the District State Attorney´s Office in Brno, Kubicek said.

The server Novinky.cz has written that the police have detained 28 people already.

Vandas said the police are looking for evidence to prove the DS´s alleged criminal activities now that a court will soon deal with the government´s proposal for the DS´s abolition.

The UOOZ arrested ten radicals in June and accused them of support and promotion of groups suppressing human rights and freedoms for having organised concerts of neo-Nazi and racist bands. According to the police, all accused are members of the neo-Nazi National Resistance movement.

"A new wave of arresting alleged ultra right supporters has started," Kubicek, who represented several people detained in the first police raid, said earlier today.

According to the UOOZ statement, available to CTK, detectives have made home searches in Prague, Hodonin, south Moravia, and Ceske Budejovice, south Bohemia.

UOOZ Pavel Hantak confirmed to CTK this morning that the police were carrying out a series of raids, but he did not elaborate.

The police are to release more information on the action against extremists at the beginning of next week.

The government is also trying to fight extremism.

The interim government of Jan Fischer recently lodged a proposal for the abolition of the Workers´ Party with the Supreme Administrative Court. The proposal points to the party´s links to neo-Nazi movements.

The court rejected the first proposal for the party's dissolution worked out by former interior minister Ivan Langer this spring, saying it was badly prepared and did not contain necessary evidence.

Autor: ČTK
www.ctk.cz