The Czech police have pressed charges against Tomio Okamura, leader of the far-right opposition Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party, following the investigation into the anti-immigration campaign carried out by the SPD last year.

SPD billboards, seen as racist by many observers, campaigned “against the EU migration pact” depicting a black man with a blood-stained shirt and holding a knife, accompanied by the message “discrepancies in healthcare won’t be solved by ‘surgeons’ from import”.

Okamura is accused of inciting hatred, a crime which carries a penalty of up to three years in prison.

“The police have ended the investigation and submitted the file to the state procurator proposing charges,” state prosecutor for Prague 1 Jan Lelek confirmed in a statement for Czech online news outlet Seznam Zprávy (SZ).

As bne IntelliNews covered earlier this year, the Czech parliament stripped Okamura of his parliamentary immunity following the January police request so he can be interrogated over the SPD’s 2024 summer and autumn billboard campaign ahead of regional and Senate elections in the country.

Okamura has seized the opportunity to portray himself as a victim of the rule of the sitting centre-right government of Petr Fiala, whom he accused of trying to silence him.

“It is an effort of Premier Fiala and Minister of Interior [Vít] Rakušan to criminalise opposition for anti-immigration poster, because Fiala’s government is trying to manipulate the elections in its favour to stay in power at any cost,” Okamura told the Czech Press Agency (CTK) in his latest allegations against the government and in response to police pressing charges.

National elections are scheduled for October, and the largest opposition party, populist ANO (31.5%) led by billionaire ex-PM Andrej Babiš, has a wide lead in the polls ahead of Fiala’s SPOLU (19.4%) list. SPD (12.8%) is battling for third place with the remaining ruling coalition party, centrist Stan (12.2%), according to the latest Stem poll for commercial television CNN Prima News.

SPD is openly courting ANO to form the next government, but it is unclear whether ANO would be willing to join forces with SPD at governmental level. In the previous parliament, ANO avoided collaborating with SPD in government, but frequently relied on the support of its legislators and joined forces with SPD in attacks on public media.

The country’s political analysts have argued that the high-profile case against Okamura could help SPD and Okamura during the ongoing election campaign.

“In individual locations, SPD is carrying out a petition campaign for freedom of speech, so it is having a real effect on the pre-election campaign,” Miroslav Mareš, a political scientist and lawyer from Masaryk University in Brno, told Czech Radio (CRo) in an interview in response to Okamura facing police charges.