Constitutional Court rejects proposal from Prague court to overturn Klaus amnesty

The Czech Constitutional Court has rejected a proposal from the Prague Municipal Court to throw out in its entirety an amnesty declared by the president, Václav Klaus, on New Year’s Day. The court is still considering a previously filed challenge to the amnesty by a cross-party group of senators. It rejected the Prague court’s appeal for two reasons. First, because the senators had been the first to challenge a plank of the amnesty halting cases running for over eight years that could have resulted in jail terms of 10 years or less. Second, because the Prague court didn’t have the right to propose the abrogation of the whole amnesty. President Klaus said he was declaring the controversial amnesty to mark 20 years of the independent Czech Republic.