More than two and a half years after the murder of journalist Jan Kutsiak in Slovakia, several former high-ranking police officers have been detained. During Operation Purge, the NAKA special unit conducted searches on suspicion of organizing a criminal association, the Slovakia’s special prosecutor’s office for organized crime said on Thursday.
Several people are being investigated, the prosecutor said, without giving their names or details of the charges.
Meanwhile, the Slovak media suggest that the operation is related to the murder of Jan Kutsiak, after which several high-ranking police officers were fired. In particular, the Markiza TV channel aired footage showing how the police conduct a search in the house of the former police chief and detain him. Other media outlets have documented the detention of the former head of the anti-corruption unit, the former head of NAKA and other former heads of Slovak law enforcement agencies.
High-profile murder of a Slovak journalist
27-year-old journalist Jan Kutsiak and his fiancée Martina Kushnirova were shot dead in February 2018 at their home 65 kilometers from Bratislava. Kutsiak conducted a journalistic investigation to reveal the connections of the close associates of the then Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico with Italian entrepreneurs who were associated with the mafia. The article was published after his death.
The murder of the journalist triggered a wave of protests in Slovakia, as a result of which the head of the country’s government, two of his assistants, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the police chief, and the Minister of Culture Marek Madaric, who formally supervised journalists in the country, resigned.
At the end of 2019, a court in Slovakia sentenced Zoltan Andrusko to 15 years in prison, who, according to the prosecution, received an offer from translator Kočner to find a hired killer. In April 2020, former serviceman Miroslav Marcek, who confessed to killing a reporter, was sentenced to 23 years in prison. In September, the court acquitted multimillionaire Marian Kočner for lack of evidence that the businessman had ordered the murder. Kočner was only sentenced to a € 5,000 fine for illegal possession of weapons.
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Sacrifices in the name of freedom of the press
Malta: Daphne Caruana Galizia
Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia died on October 16, 2017 as a result of the explosion of a rented car, in which, according to investigators, a remote explosive device went off. Recently, the reporter has been investigating the head of government and his aides in connection with suspicions of corruption. She established that the wife of the prime minister owns a Panamanian offshore company.
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Sacrifices in the name of freedom of the press
Slovakia: Jan Kutsiak and Martina Kusnirova
Journalist Yan Kutsiak and his girlfriend Martina Kusnirova were shot dead in their home at the end of February 2018. Kutsiak investigated the possible influence of the Italian mafia group “Ndrangheta” on the Slovak government. In one of his latest materials, he accused those close to Prime Minister Robert Fico of close contacts with Italian entrepreneurs, in turn, associated with the mafia.
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Victims of Freedom of the Press
Mexico: Miroslava Brich
Miroslava Brich was killed on March 23, 2017 on the threshold of her own house with 8 shots to the head. The journalist specialized in the crimes of Mexican drug cartels and government corruption. The killer of the journalist left a note with the words “Traitor”. Breach became the third media representative to be killed in Mexico this March.
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Sacrifices in the name of freedom of the press
Iraq: Shifa Gardi
Shifa Gardi died on February 25, 2017 from a land mine explosion in northern Iraq. She was a reporter for the Kurdish television station Rudaw, reporting on clashes between Iraqi government forces and IS militants. Islamic State radical jihadists have already been accused of many cases of disappearances or executions of journalists in the territories around Mosul.
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Sacrifices in the name of freedom of the press
Bangladesh: Avit Roy
“Freethinker” was the name of the blog of Avit Roy, who considered himself a “secular humanist” and with his criticisms of Islam drew the ire of religious fundamentalists in Bangladesh. Roy lived in the United States, but in February 2015 he went to a book fair in Dhaka, where he was hacked to death with a machete by fanatics. In Bangladesh, bloggers and journalists are often attacked by Islamist extremists.
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Sacrifices in the name of freedom of the press
Saudi Arabia: Raif Badawi
10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes – this is the last sentence to the writer and Internet activist from Saudi Arabia. Raif Badawi has been in prison since 2012 for “insulting Islam.” The first lashes were publicly inflicted on him in January 2015. The ensuing wave of international protests forced the authorities to partially suspend the execution of the sentence.
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Sacrifices in the name of freedom of the press
Uzbekistan: Salijon Abdurakhmanov
Uzbekistani journalist Salijon Abdurakhmanov has been in prison since 2008 on charges of possession and distribution of drugs. According to Reporters Without Borders, Uzbek law enforcement agencies are planting drugs on journalists who are unwanted by the authorities. Abdurakhmanov was a freelance correspondent for the Voice of America and several other media outlets.
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Sacrifices in the name of freedom of the press
Turkey: Deniz Yugel
Correspondent of the German newspaper Die Welt Denise Jucel was arrested in Istanbul on February 14, 2017. The authorities charge him with membership in a terrorist organization, dissemination of propaganda and abuse of information. According to Turkish law, Yudzel’s preliminary imprisonment can last up to 5 years. More than 140 journalists were imprisoned in Turkey after the 2016 putsch.
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Victims of Freedom of the Press
China: Gao Yu
Independent journalists work in China under the watchful eye of the authorities. Former DW freelance worker Gao Yu was arrested in 2014 and sentenced to 7 years in prison in April 2015 for divulging classified information. Due to international pressure, the journalist was released from prison and is now under house arrest.
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Sacrifices in the name of freedom of the press
Azerbaijan: Mehman Huseynov
Mehman Huseynov is one of the most popular video bloggers and journalists in Azerbaijan and is known for high-profile revelations of theft among officials. In early 2017, in Baku, he was beaten and tortured, reportedly by a group of plainclothes police officers. In March 2017, Huseynov was charged with libel against the police chief and sentenced to 2 years in prison.
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Victims of Freedom of the Press
Macedonia: Tomislav Kezharovsky
In 2013, Tomislav Kezharovsky was sentenced by a Skopje court to 4.5 years in prison for naming a witness to the murder of another journalist in his article. According to Kezharovsky, he wanted to shed light on “some of the many secret spots in the Macedonian police and judicial authorities.” The sentence was later commuted. Now the journalist is writing a book about his conclusion.
By: Sabrina Pabst, Beate Hinrichs