Few days ago I received another letter from Mr. Gilbert F. McCrae, today I received next one, US and British citizen, who is recently incarcerated in Valdice prison where he is serving 16 years sentence for the murder he claims he did not commit. His claim is quite valid. The so called “evidence” against him, presented by the police during the so called “trial”, wouldn’t pass the Grand Jury in an American court. His present predicament necessarily raises question how many others men and women like him, under similar circumstances, are imprisoned in the Czech Republic – without any direct evidence or witnesses against them.
The Communist judicial system still in use in the Czech Republic, where police, prosecutions and courts work in unison against the accused, sometime in collusion with the so called “defense” attorney, without a jury, gives accused no chance to receive a just and objective trial. In such a system where instead of the basic judicial principle “In Dubio Pro Reo” the politics and expedience rules supreme, the sentence of an innocent person (in this particular case Mr. McCrae) is the rule, not exception. I personally informed about his case US Embassy in Prague, US State Department, and recently the office of US Senator Sherrod Brown representing Ohio, but so far, the US officers move very slowly, like if they are afraid to make any waves. Here we are not talking about some Third World country where still stone, hang, or behead people in public and use terrorist attacks against their foes, but the Czech Republic, allegedly civilized, democratic, and law and order country, member of NATO and EU, in middle of Europe. It is really a sorry state of affairs if a US citizen, who to any objective observer is obviously framed and sentenced to prison for the crime he did not commit, is not able to depend on the help from the diplomatic corps of his own country.
Jan Šinágl, 31.1.2013
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