"So the very act that somebody did it, I don't blame them because it was essentially blackmail, it was essentially extortion, and sometimes I don't even get angry at the courts that have decided that he needs to be taken off that list, I don't know if you're familiar with that construction. The courts then used to conclude, and it was very usual, that the period of totalitarianism, that it was a period of unfreedom, and the binding act was a legal act. And that legal act was made in an unfree manner, and if it was made in an unfree manner, it is also invalid. So it wasn't that these various people, actors or actresses and so on, that they were being crossed off the list because they hadn't made that binding act, whether written or oral. But because the courts considered that act invalid, and if it's invalid, it can't be registered. So basically there was a period of time that whoever asked for it was crossed off."
"Either... I don't know now, I think Jirka Müller or Zdena Urválková arranged it, I don't know. I was acting on behalf of Petr Cibulka, I think, and she of Pospíchal, I don't remember the details, because the defence was joint, it was in the same way. And it was such a huge trial, a trial to intimidate the youth of Brno. So it was made to raise people´s awareness. It was judged there in the biggest session hall." - "Where was it, in which building?" - "Well, in the building of the regional court today, then there was also the city court." - "And where is it, on which street?" - "That's Roosevelt Street, on Roosevelt Street, that's where the city courthouse was then and the county courthouse was then, and it was guarded by, I know, big Tatra cars or something with those antennas or transmitters drove in there, because it was all filmed, right. I think it was going through, the proceedings, some kind of control, that they watched it live, the State security members, in those cars, and from there probably some instructions were given too, or not given, I don't know, I was in the session hall. But it was such an intimidating process, really intimidating, that it couldn't take place normally in a courtroom of some kind without the participation of the cars here and so on."
"So it was quite normal there, because everybody worked there, that, as you probably know, there is no money there, there were some of those kibbutz vouchers that were used to buy things in their shops. Again, they worked there in the morning, I don't know now until what time, then there was a break, because in that period of those afternoon hours it was not suitable or possible to work again because of the heat, and then they worked again. I know that I was there a lot... we were stacking fruit boxes, on a belt like that, we were putting the fruit into cold storage rooms, which was quite nice, because it wasn't warm, we wore padded coats."
Jiří Machourek was born on 10 February 1944 in Brno to his mother Maria, née Nečasová, and his father František. Mum was a shop assistant, dad worked in a bank and had a small farm, which had to be helped by witness´s two older sisters Zdena and Marie. Jiří Machourek was shaped by a childhood filled with work, scouting, reading and faith. Being an altar boy in the church made it impossible for him to go to university after graduation. He graduated from a two-year library school, went through manual occupations and military service with the Border Guard, and then was accepted to the Faculty of Law at Charles University. He was surprised by the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in Hungary on his return from leave. He spent several months in 1969 working on a kibbutz and traveling in Israel. In 1973 he was first a corporate lawyer in Brno, then became a trainee barrister at a law office and passed the bar exam in 1976. During the period of normalisation he defended many Brno dissidents, such as Jiří Müller, Petr Cibulka and Jaroslav Šabata, as well as people from the Hadivadlo and the Husa na provázku theatres. He took an active part in the revolutionary events in Brno in November 1989, after which he was briefly the chairman of the regional court. In the 1990s he established a private law practice. In 2017, Jiří Machourek was inducted into the Lawyers’ Hall of Fame at the suggestion of the Judges’ Union, and was also included in the publication Advocates Against Totalitarianism. In 2020, he was living in Brno.
