Lubomír Bažant

“When I started to work there, I had them under surveillance, I knew exactly where they took it; they took it to a farm in the direction of Nový Hradec. We established a base opposite to it, and we took photos of it there and noted down cars and people who were taking it there. We found out operationally when they were going to take it to Prague. They loaded it into a car and took it to Prague, and I had them under surveillance; however, according to the regulations at the time, the surveillance was only on the outskirts of Prague, and the Prague surveillance took over there. When I wanted to know where they took it, they told me that the Prague surveillance said that they had unfortunately run out of petrol, and they had lost the car. Just to give you an idea. I stand by that; it is true. That is my experience as the Security Information Service director.”

“I have a funny story which happened when I was cutting wood for my father in Libišany and suddenly a yellow Zhiguli car stopped there and a police officer from Libišany got out of it and yelled at me: ‘Luboš, come over here! I will take you to the police station, you are a social parasite, you will explain to me at the station what you live on!‘ He forced me into the car and took me to Pardubice. They started with me there (saying) I was a parasite and that I would be imprisoned. I said I could not find a job but that I was living on money that František Janouch from Charter 77 Foundation in Stockholm was sending me. They opened their eyes wide, and I had a wrapped piece of paper in my pocket on which they announced that they were sending me Tuzex vouchers, so I gave it to them, and I still had the Tuzex vouchers in my pocket because I had picked them up at the post office. The vouchers saved me, so they kicked me out of the police station, they did not even take me back home and I was left there without money, just with the Tuzex vouchers in my work trousers. I don´t remember anymore whether I walked from Pardubice. This is how it happened. I escaped being charged with social parasitism because Vašek Havel had asked Franta Janouch to send me some Tuzex vouchers.”

“I dare say that I and my friend, a co-prisoner Zbyněk Čeřovský helped to save his life. Because Zbyněk went to the infirmary and saw them carrying a man on a stretcher and the man was Vašek. So, he (Zbyněk) talked to him, and he (Vašek) did not respond to him at all; he was in a terrible state. They were carrying him to the infirmary. Zbyněk came back and said that it was horrible that Vašek was seriously ill. He was ill because he had worked in the laundry room where there was steam and shirts were washed there and they transferred him to a scrap yard, he worked outside, and it was twenty degrees below zero back then. This means that he immediately became ill with lungs and that is why they carried him to the infirmary; Zbyněk said we had to do something, so we sent a message to Olga, his wife, via the net that we had built saying that Vašek was ill and that she should do something. They pressured, Vašek was transported to Pankrác, and they later released him from there.”

“Those people told me what Charter was and I and my friend Renda Matoušek from Liberec, who died shortly after the Velvet Revolution, decided at that time to sign Charter. That is why I think that we are the only two signatories of Charter 77 who signed it in prison. And there was one guy back then who I was friends with and who was about to be released. So I asked him, we prepared an illegal letter, it was a piece of paper, we rolled it up, put it into a plastic cover, he put it in his anus, and smuggled the piece of paper out and carried it to a family of our co-prisoner Honza Litomiský that handed it over to Radio Free Europe. So, I then listened to the radio on my straw mattress and heard that Luboš Bažant and Renda Matoušek had signed Charter in prison.”