Prague's mayor under police protection due to 'risk on his life'
At least one Czech investigative outlet claimed that the protection was due to the mayor being the target of a Russian poisoning plot
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFPrague Mayor Zdenek Hrib signs the Pact of Free Cities at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, December 16, 2019.(photo credit: TAMAS KASZAS/REUTERS)Prague Mayor Zdeněk Hřib has been placed under police protection due to a significant "risk on his life," The Guardian reported.Though at least one Czech investigative outlet reported that Hřib had been targeted by a Russian poisoning plot, the mayor did not confirm this, or reveal any information on the threat at all.“First of all I should say that it is very important for me to stand by my belief although it means a risk for my life,” Hřib said during an interview with Russian independent radio station Echo of Moscow.“The police protection was simply given to me by the Czech police. By their decision, I am not able to comment on the reasons.”The mayor has been under protection for over two weeks. According to Czech media reports, he had been placed under temporary protection after he filed a police report concerned that he was being followed near his home.According to a report published Sunday in the Czech weekly magazine Respekt citing anonymous sources within Czech intelligence, a person with Russian diplomatic papers and a suitcase with a lethal poison called ricin had arrived in Prague three weeks ago with the intention of assassinating both Hřib and Ondřej Kolář, another Czech politician who is mayor of the Prague 6 Municipality.According to The Guardian, the two politicians are known for being outspoken in local issues involving Russia. For instance, Hřib had spoken out in favor of renaming the square in front of the Russian Embassy in Prague in honor of Boris Nemtsov, an opposition politician murdered in 2015 near the Kremlin. Kolář, meanwhile, was a major force behind the successful efforts to take down a statue of Soviet-era Marshal Ivan Konev earlier in April, despite harsh protests from the Russian embassy.“Konev has been toppled, but Konev will stand again – only in the museum,” Kolár was reported by local news outlets as saying.The efforts to remove the statue had been ongoing for several years, and Kolár's outspoken support of the efforts have caused him to receive police protection on at least one occasion beforehand. In 2019, he was even forced to leave the city after being hit by several threat messages through social media, text messages and emails, The Guardian reported.While Czech police and politicians have not confirmed the report's authenticity, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dimitry Peskov dissmissed it as fake, The Guardian reported.“We don’t know anything at all about this investigation,” he said on Monday, according to The Guardian. “We don’t know who did the investigation. It looks like yet another canard.”
