Czech exiles planned to abduct Czechoslovak president Benes after 1948

A group of Czech exiles considered abducting Edvard Benes from Czechoslovakia after the 1948 communist takeover, the Lidove noviny reported. It said the plan had been dropped due to the poor state of Benes’s health. Former resistance fighter Radomir Luza told the daily that he had proposed the plan to the French military intelligence. Edvard Benes was one of the politicians who contributed to the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Between 1940 and 1945 he was the head of the Czechoslovak exile government seated in London. Mr Benes resigned as president in June 1948.