Among the twenty four neo-Nazis arrested in a series of raids conducted by the Czech Republic’s Organized Crime Detection Unit (ÚOOZ) was the leader of the Serbian branch of the international neo-Nazi group Blood & Honour. The arrests were designed to break up a terrorist attack.
Dragan Petrović, the 35-year-old from Jagodina, Serbia is listed on the Blood & Honour site as a member of the Serbian neo-Nazi group Nacionalni Stroj (National Alignment). Petrović is married to a Czech woman and has lived there for several years. According to Romea.cz, He recently organized a neo-Nazi protest in the Czech Republic against the arrest of Blood & Honour members in Holland. He is reported to be a “regular fixture at neo-Nazi-related concerts and gatherings in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.”(BE92.net, October 22, 2009)
Czech Police President Oldřich Martinů announced on Czech Television that several of the neo-Nazis arrested on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack in the Czech Republic were being trained by a member of the Czech armed forces (Romea.cz, October 29, 2009).
The raids concerned three different criminal cases. The first case involved the arrest of twelve people in Dobříš, Prague, Tábor and several other towns, who were allegedly linked to the neo-Nazi organization White Justice. Of the twelve people arrested, police charged ten and released them on their own recognizance.
In the second case, officers arrested six people in Kladno and in Prague and subsequently charged two with distributing illegal materials promoting the National Resistance. The two being charged are Patrik Vondrák, leader of the Workers’ Party in Prague, and Michaela Dupová, head of the neo-Nazi organization Resistance Women Unity (RWU).
The third case implicates six people who allegedly participated in organizing fourteen illegal white power concerts. They were also released on their own recognizance (Romea.cz, October 22 and 26, 2009).
On October 24, more than 100 people demonstrated against racism and extremism in Prague. People gathered to protest growing racial intolerance and extremism in Czech society. The protest was convened by the Slovo 21 civic association in cooperation with the ROMEA civic association (Romea.cz, October 25, 2009).
Special thanks to Graeme Atkinson of Searchlight Magazine for research on this story.
