by ED HOLT
A Slovak businessman with alleged links to organised crime has been found not guilty of ordering the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak in a ruling that has left press freedom campaigners and politicians shocked.
Marian Kocner had been accused of ordering the killing of Kuciak, an investigative reporter with the Slovak news website Aktuality.sk.
Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova, both 27, were shot dead at Kuciak’s home in Velka Maca, 40 miles east of the capital Bratislava in February 2018. Self-confessed hired killer Miroslav Marcek, 37, had earlier this year pleaded guilty to murdering the couple and was sentenced to 23 years in jail.
But a court in Pezinok, north of the capital, ruled yesterday, Sept. 3, that there was not enough evidence to prove Kocner had ordered the murder. A woman also on trial for helping Kocner facilitate the murder, Alena Zsuszova, was acquitted, but a third person, Tomas Szabo, was found guilty of taking part in the killings.
“We are surprised and disappointed that after a long investigation and legal process that it has ended in this verdict. This is a sad day for press freedom in Slovakia and internationally,” Tom Gibson, EU Representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.
“This has sent out a potentially very chilling signal to other journalists that they cannot be protected and cannot do their work safely,” he told IPS.
The murders of Kuciak and Kusnirova shocked Slovakia and led to the largest mass protests in the country since the fall of communism.
Prime Minister Robert Fico and Interior Minister Robert Kalinak were forced to resign, and the head of the police service later stepped down.
Police said that the murders were related to Kuciak’s work as an investigative journalist – Kuciak’s last story had exposed alleged links between Italian mafia and Fico’s Smer party – and the subsequent investigation uncovered alleged links between politicians, prosecutors, judges, and police officers and the people allegedly involved in the killings.
At the heart of these was Kocner, a controversial figure frequently linked to alleged serious criminals and who in a separate case was earlier this year sentenced to 19 years in jail for forging promissory notes.
Prosecutors argued in court that Kocner had ordered the killing in revenge for articles he had written about the multimillionaire’s business dealings.
Although not accused of pulling the trigger himself, for many Kocner was the central figure in the trial and a symbol of deep-rooted corruption at the highest levels of state.
And ahead of the verdict, journalists had said the outcome of the trial would be a watershed in Slovak history, in terms of both restoring public trust in a judiciary which the Kuciak murder investigation has shown to apparently be riddled with corruption, and in showing that same judiciary can clearly punish crimes designed to silence journalists.
But soon after the ruling, many local journalists said they had been left shocked and disappointed, while others said they were angry and could not understand how the court had reached its verdict.
But many said they simply felt the justice system had failed the victims and their families, as the people who ordered the murder had still not been brought to justice.
Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), describe the acquittals as “a huge failure of the investigation bodies and the judiciary”.
Inter Press Service for more