Jiří Wolf

In 1990, Wolf was invited to the United States, where he presented his case as an example of efficient work by the Amnesty International. He spoke at AIUSA's annual general meeting, held that year in Boston. He also toured the Nashua Street Jail, newly opened after courts deemed the Charles Street Jail unfit, to view prison conditions in America.

In 1984, Amnesty International declared him a Prisoner of Conscience. AIUSA campus groups on the San Francisco peninsula took up his case and, with Congressman Tom Lantos and his wife Annette, campaigned for his release, winning extensive news coverage and high level support. Jiri was released at the end of his prison term. On the same day, dissident Václav Havel was also released from jail.

Wolf was arrested for the second time on 17 May 1983 for passing information about conditions in Czech prisons to the Austrian Embassy in Prague. He was sentenced for another six years in prison for subversion in cooperation with foreign agents, which was followed by three years of protective supervision. He was again placed in Valdice, where his health worsened considerably; he suffered from chest pain and deterioration of vision. Appeals by international organizations eventually led to small improvements in his treatment.

Wolf was for the first time arrested on 16 February 1978 after the police found "subversive, anti-Party, and anti-socialist documents" during a house search. As result, he was sentenced to three years in prison for subversion. After Wolf claimed that his confession had been forced by physical and psychological pressure, he was prosecuted for false accusation and his punishment was increased by another six months in prison. Wolf then spent more than half a year in isolation or in a special ward in the prison in Minkovice, during which period he lost about twenty kilograms in weight. Due to his failure to meet working standards, Wolf also spent part of the sentence in the prison in Valdice under the strictest supervision.

Jiří Wolf (5 January 1952, Jindřichův Hradec, Czechoslovakia) is a signatory of Charter 77, former political prisoner, anticommunist, author of storybooks, and radical opponent and critic of the "nobility of the Charter", which, in his opinion, includes Václav Havel and several other persons close to the former Czech president.