Court upholds acquittal of Prague primary school teacher who cast doubt on Russian war crimes

Prague primary school teacher Martina Bednářová, who faced charges of denying genocide and war crimes over statements she made in class about the war in Ukraine, has had her acquittal upheld by the Court of Appeal. The court rejected the public prosecutor's appeal, which requested an eight-month suspended sentence for the former Czech teacher, as well as a five-year ban on pedagogic, educational or other work with children. The judge said that although the teacher's statements may have been wrong from an ethical and pedagological perspective, from a legal perspective, it could not be proven that the teacher had denied any specific war crimes and thus could not be punished by means of criminal law.

Ms. Bednářová was fired from her job at a Prague primary school after she made the controversial statements in a lesson in early April 2022, a few weeks after Russia launched its war on Ukraine, and was subsequently charged with denying war crimes and genocide.