- The Specialized Criminal Court acknowledged the teacher as guilty of denying the Holocaust.
- He ordered him a fine of EUR 700 or a substitute imprisonment.
- The judgment is not final.
- The defendant sent a disputed letter regarding the Holocaust Museum in Sered.
The Specialized Criminal Court (ŠTS) in Pezinok recognized the university teacher Ján D. as guilty of committing an offense of denial and approval of the Holocaust. Imposed a money penalty of 700 euros, If it is not paid for a substitute one -month prison sentence. Also forfeiting things, including a personal computer. The Tuesday’s judgment of the court is not final, the prosecutor appealed, the defendant’s defense counsel retained a period of time for a possible appeal.
Criminal activity for which the defendant was recognized as guilty is considered serious because it also affects other members of society. “The freedom of expression is not boundless, it has certain limits. These limits expressed by law result from international conventions and the Constitution of the Slovak Republic,” stressed Self -judge Miroslav Mazúch.
However, he qualified the defendant’s proceedings mildly than in the indictment. “The court did not agree with the legal qualifications that the proceedings, as described in the accusation and in the indictment, would have also fulfilled all signs of the crime of production and expansion of extremist material,” the judge added.
In 2019, the teacher sent an open letter to the Head of the Holocaust Museum in Sered Martin Korčok. In the letter, for example, the defendant stated that “the Holocaust in Seredi is mythology contrary to the reality, de facto it is a museum of something that did not exist in Sered”. In 2020, the former National Criminal Agency intervened in the defendant’s house as well as in his office at the Technical University of Košice.
The court argued that what was happening over the years 1942 to 1945 in Sered was described in an expert opinion. The expert described a letter written by the defendants as a careless, unreliable work with the literature. According to the expert, the author used selective quotes that were twisted, it was incomplete information, and it was also authors who were convicted of crime in the territory of other countries in connection with this area.
The prosecutor of the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Trnava, Martin Nociar, announced the appeal on Tuesday to the detriment of the defendant to the statement of guilt and punishment. “I continue to believe that the defendant with the action, as described in the prosecution, In addition to the offense of denial and approval of the Holocaust and crimes against humanity, he also committed the crime of production of extremist material and also the crime of expanding extremist material, ” told TASR.
Ján D. advocate did not comment on the media. The defendant did not participate in Tuesday’s main hearing, he had already refused to blame.
