StB interrogators pulled Jan Patočka in for a long interrogation immediately after his 1 March 1977 meeting with Dutch Foreign Minister Max van der Stoel; he died roughly two weeks later

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Dutch Foreign Minister Max van der Stoel met Jan Patočka, as Charter 77's spokesman, at Prague's Hotel InterContinental — by the Paměť národa (Memory of Nations) archive's account, the first meeting between a Western official on an official state visit and Czechoslovak dissidents. In a 1996 interview, van der Stoel recalled the government's reaction: "The meeting led to an explosive reaction from the government. They were extremely angry," and that he "was terribly sorry" to later learn Patočka "had been arrested and interrogated for endless hours."

Patočka's son-in-law Jan Sokol gave Paměť národa the same sequence directly: journalists recorded and broadcast the meeting abroad, "which enraged people here. So then they pulled Patočka in for a long interrogation. He came back extremely exhausted." The magazine states Patočka "died shortly after a series of StB interrogations — a mere two weeks after meeting the minister."

This supplies a specific triggering event — not previously in the vault — for the interrogation chain that precedes Patočka's death, and is consistent with the 3 March 1977 interrogation date in claim-blazek-stb-file-dates-patocka-interrogation-3-march-1977-prosecution-halted.