A BANSKÁ Bystrica district court has stopped further criminal prosecution of Marián Kotleba, the leader of the People’s Party - Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) and former leader of the far-right organisation Slovenská Pospolitosť, in a case involving text written in election leaflets in 2009, the SITA newswire reported.
The prosecutor has appealed the court’s verdict and it will be reviewed by the Banská Bystrica Regional Court, SITA wrote.
The prosecutor filed the charges against Kotleba for text in an election leaflet distributed in 2009, when Kotleba ran for the post of president of Banská Bystrica Self-Governing Region. In the leaflet Kotleba wrote that he would “eliminate unfair advantages for not only the Gypsy parasites”. The prosecutor claimed that Kotleba had committed a criminal offence by defaming a nation, race or religion.
According to a blog posted by Slovenská Pospolitosť, the court wrote in its ruling that the prosecution’s case was unjustified and the file contained no evidence proving that a criminal offence had been committed.
“I consider the evidence sufficient,” the prosecutor told SITA.
