PRAGUE (EJP)---Some 250 extreme-rightists gathered in central Prague on Saturday to protest against what they called freedom of speech violation by the Czech authorities.

They rallied at Prague’s Palackeho Namesti square where public rallies can take place without any authorisation, the online daily CzechNews reported. 

After the demonstration ended, the police controlled identity cards of two extremists. No incidents were reported but some demonstrators had to hand over hand-to-hand combat weapons to the police, such as knuckle dusters.

According to the police spokesperson Eva Brozova, most of the extremists came from outside of Prague.

During the rally, several speakers criticized the state of democracy and freedom of speech in the Czech Republic and complained about the ban of the planned march which was to take place the same day in the Western Czech city of Pilsen.

On Thursday, the Pilsen Mayor Pavel Roedl announced that he was revoking his earlier decision to allow the march on free-speech grounds -- a decision that triggered outrage.

The Mayor explained that he would not want to head a city where neo-Nazis can freely salute.

The city had adopted a crisis plan, similar to the one used for natural disasters.

In Pilsen, the neo-Nazis planned to march past the city's Great Synagogue, Europe´s third largest, coinciding with the 66th anniversary of the first Jewish deportation to the Nazi concentration camps.

There were about 2,500 Jews living in Pilsen before the World War II. Only 112 survived the war.

The chairman of the Czech Federation of Jewish Communities, Jiri Danicek, told the CTK news agency that the date of the march was connected with the first transport of Jews from Pilsen to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp, in north Bohemia.

Several hundreds of people gathered outside the Pilsen synagogue. Among them were Jewish Community leaders, the city’s Mayor and young anti-Fascists.

This was the second time the neo-Nazis attempted to march near a synagogue in the Czech Republic in the past few months.

Last November, they tried to demonstrate in Prague´s old Jewish quarter on the anniversary of a 1938 Nazi pogrom against Jews known as the "Kristallnacht" or Night of the Broken Glass.