In West Germany, he received CIC intelligence training
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Zdeněk Kovařík was born on June 4, 1927 in Klatovy. His father had a locksmith shop, where Zdeněk learned his trade, then graduated from the secondary industrial school. In 1937, Zdeněk Kovařík became a scout, and after the war he continued his activities in this renewed organization. He was a member of the Kruh scout group in Klatovy, led by Pavel Křivský. After February 1948, members of the group decided to join the resistance against the regime. The group, which knew Šumava very well, participated in the transfer of refugees to the West. For the most part, they were Czechoslovak officers expelled from the army or students expelled from universities. Zdeněk Kovařík was also trained in West Germany by the American intelligence service CIC, to which he then delivered encrypted messages and information from Czechoslovakia about the Czechoslovak arms industry and other strategically important factories. In 1949, he stopped crossing the border regularly because he was conscripted into the army. Křivský‘s group was compromised and in 1951 Kovařík was arrested in the barracks. Blindfolded, he was taken to a detention centre in Plzeň, where interrogations, including physical violence, took place. The trial of the eight-member scout group took place from 15 to 17 October 1952 in Prague. For treason and espionage, Pavel Křivský received life imprisonment, while the other members walked away with heavy sentences. Zdeněk Kovařík was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Kovařík was initially imprisoned at Pankrác, then transferred to the Jáchymov region to mine uranium. He passed through the Nikolai and Rovnost camps, where he worked as a mine locksmith and later as a pump repairman. During the great amnesty in 1960 he was not released, he was transferred to Leopoldov. From there he was released in 1963 with a seven-year suspended sentence. After returning from prison he worked as a locksmith and a heating engineer. In the 1970s he studied at the Energy Institute and became an energy engineer and head of the revision department. He retired from this position. Zdeněk Kovařík died in July 2012.