A Czech family smuggled refugees, they got almost five years in Slovakia
According to the court verdict, Poláková negotiated the transport of Afghans with an unknown person via the social network Facebook. For three minors who were staying in a refugee facility, a father and daughter set out in their BMW from South Moravia to the east of Slovakia to the town of Medzilaborce.
“They waited in the parking lot next to the department store for three teenagers who were able to get to France or Belgium. They loaded them into a car, the defendant Polák was driving and his daughter was sitting in the passenger seat. They left in the direction of Prešov, where they were stopped by a police patrol,” state prosecutor Dagmar Veverková stated.
Česká took the couple to court, which had no mercy on her, and both father and daughter were convicted of embezzlement. “I have to state that in addition to the prison sentence, the defendant was also sentenced to confiscation of the car, mobile phone and funds that he had in the car,” pointed out Veverková. The court did not say how much money the couple was supposed to collect for transporting the Afghans.
In a Czech prison
After the conviction, the pair requested the possibility to serve their sentence in the Czech Republic. Both emphasized family reasons in their application, Poláková mentioned her children, Polák his wife and grandchildren. The public prosecutor’s office did not object to the possibility of serving the sentence in some of the domestic prisons, and the Brno Regional Court thus recognized both verdicts.
At the same time, the Slovak verdict was striking in comparison to how the domestic justice system deals with smugglers. The same court panel that allowed the convicts to serve their sentences in the country was also supposed to hear the appeal of a taxi driver from the south of Moravia who transported refugees across the border on two occasions in August this year. The District Court in Hodonín sentenced him to half a year in prison with a conditional suspension of two years and fined him 50,000 crowns.
However, the man fell ill before the hearing, so the court had to postpone the hearing of his case.
A train in the Zlín region hit three men lying by the tracks, apparently migrants. One died
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