Current Affairs Former communist prosecutor, jailed for judicial murder, may soon walk free

Ludmila Brožová-Polednová, photo: CTK The 88-year-old former communist prosecutor has become a symbol of the crimes committed by the communist regime in its most vicious period – the hardline 1950s. Only in her twenties at the time, she played an active role in sending an innocent woman to the gallows and, in a case which has just surfaced, even proposed a death sentence for a pregnant woman who was portrayed as an enemy of the state. When she was sentenced to 6 years in prison in 2008, those looking for justice rejoiced and the pity people may have felt for an ailing old woman in her circumstances was somewhat dampened by the fact that she entered jail completely unrepentant for her past.

When the Supreme Court turned down her appeal and President Klaus refused to grant her a pardon it seemed that Mrs. Brožová-Polednová would spend her last years in jail. However it has now emerged that efforts were made to find a way to get the country’s oldest prisoner released. Although President Klaus publicly refused to pardon the former communist prosecutor his office sought legal means to get her released and found that three presidential amnesties – from 1953, 1955 and 1990 apply even to cases that had not been tried, each lowering her sentence by two years and basically annulling it. Milada Horáková The objective would thus be achieved without anyone bearing direct moral responsibility for letting the notorious communist prosecutor out. A court in Hradec Králové has confirmed that the said amnesties really apply to the case in question and a final ruling is now expected from the Supreme Court in Prague. If the verdict goes in Mrs. Brožová-Polednová’s favour then paradoxically the tables will have turned and the woman who says with undaunted pride that she was “part of a struggle against Western imperialists” would be able to sue the state for compensation for a year spent in jail.