The District Court on Tuesday rejected a lawsuit filed by former Interior Minister Jan Hamáček (ČSSD) against the owner of the Seznam Zprávy website, Seznam.cz, and reporters Jan Kroupa and Kristina Cirocová. They said last year that Hamáček wanted to trade the “cover-up” of the Vrbětice case for the Russian Sputnik V vaccine and the holding of a US-Russian political summit in Prague.
Judge Eva Harmachová dismissed Hamáček’s lawsuit against the server was rejected because, in her opinion, the personality rights of the former minister had not been violated. She rejected the lawsuit against Kroupa and Cirocová because the reporters are not passively legitimated in the case as employees of the server, which means that they are not the bearers of the substantive legal obligation at stake in the proceedings.
Hamáček did not appear in court on Tuesday but has long denied the server’s allegations. “The article is based on speculation and lies,” he said earlier. And he demanded an apology and CZK 10 million.
“We claimed that our articles were true and had evidence for them. And the court concluded that we were right,” Kroupa told reporters after the verdict.
Hamáček’s lawyer did not want to comment on the results of the proceedings ‘without consulting her client.’
Tuesday’s proceedings were held behind closed doors in a secure room due to classified information. The participants also had to hand over their mobile phones.