Hospital boss sentenced to prison for failing to report murders

The former head of an Eastern Bohemian hospital, Josef Pejchl, has been sentenced to ten months in prison, after failing to alert the authorities to a spate of killings carried out at his infirmary by a member of staff. In February, male nurse Petr Zelenka was found guilty of murdering seven patients at the hospital in Havlíčkův Brod, and attempting to kill ten more, with lethal injections of the drug heparin. On Thursday, the hospital’s former director was also sentenced. Mr Pejchl is appealing the verdict. He says he did report irregularities at the hospital as early as October 2006, but that the authorities failed to act. The police arrested Mr Zelenka two months later.