Man accused of spreading Covid disinformation acquitted

The Pilsen District Court has acquitted thirty-four-year-old Jan Jungmann of spreading disinformation about Covid-19, the Czech news site iDnes reports. The lawsuit, for which he was facing up to eight years in prison, centred around some comments he made on Facebook in February 2021 during the state of emergency, in which he claimed, among other things, that medical staff at the Pilsen University Hospital were deliberately killing patients with Covid in order to “boost their numbers”. The court ruled on Friday that what he did was not a crime, but the judgment is not final as there may still be an appeal.

The court said it was true that the man was spreading false information, but according to Senate President Josef Prach, Jungmann's claims were so absurd and detached from reality that they did not cause concern among the population. Jungmann defended himself by saying he was in a bad mental state at the time he wrote the comments and that he felt afraid when he read articles about Covid and didn't know what to believe.