Czech appeals court sends two Dutchmen to prison for beating up Prague waiter

Prague, Oct 15 (CTK) – The appeals Prague High Court sent the brothers from Netherlands, Armin and Arash Nahvi, to prison for 5.5 and five years for beating up a waiter in Prague centre last year, finding them guilty of causing severe bodily harm, but not of attempted murder today.

The appeals court lowered Armin Nahvi’s original sentence by half a year and it upheld his brother’s prison term.

The court also expelled the brothers from the Czech Republic for ten years.

Arash, 32, and Armin, 29, arrived in Prague with five other friends for a stag party in April 2018.

The attack occurred on open air premises belonging to a restaurant in the centre of Prague. It was preceded by a dispute between the restaurant staff and the Dutch tourists, who brought in their own alcohol and refused to leave the establishment.

The following brawl mainly harmed one of the waiters, whom the Dutch attacked very brutally until he remained lying unconscious with heavy skull fractures and a brain hemorrhage. He underwent several surgeries and had to apply for a disability pension.

“Though both defendants undoubtedly committed a brutal attack, it was not of such a level to fulfil the body of the crime of murder,” appeals court panel chairman Martin Zelenka said.

The Nahvi brothers, whom the state attorney labelled as the main assailants, told the court that they had been drunk during the attack and claimed they cannot remember the incident very much. They said they had joined the conflict in order to defend their friends.

Arash Nahvi told the court in English today that he had not intended to kill or seriously injure anyone involved in the brawl. He also said he sincerely regretted the deed and would never do it again.

The court also convicted Armin Nahvi of an attack on a guest in a pub elsewhere in Prague. The appeals court qualified this act as rioting, but not as an attempted harming of another’s health, and this is why it lowered his original prison term.

According to the verdict, the Dutch brothers must also pay more than 1.8 million crowns in compensation to the beaten man and further 159,000 crowns to the health insurance company.

After the attack, the Dutch fled from the scene of the accident and left for Berlin on the same day. Later, they returned to Prague, because they had air tickets for a flight from Prague to the Netherlands. The police arrested them at the Prague airport.

Two of them were subsequently released, another three got eight-month suspended sentences and were expelled from the Czech Republic for five years.

($1=23.411 crowns)

hol/dr/bas