News Site Transitions reports that the acquittal of Marian Kocner and Alena Zsuzsova in the widely watched murder trial related to the murder Jan Kuciak and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova was accompanied with great frustration by the people who had followed the case in great detail for the past two years.
Kuciak and fiancee were shot in their home on 21 February 2018.
Four months passed since the first verdict, which was delivered under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Transitions the verdict will be reviewed in 2021 at the Slovak Supreme Court after prosecutors appealed.
“The “big” case, with defendants Kocner and Zsuzsova, who are accused of ordering the murder of an “inconvenient“ journalist who had been writing about Kocner’s shady business deals, was picked up by the Supreme Court in November. An electronic system appointed a panel of judges by random for the trial. Not long after, the composition of the three-judge panel ignited questions about possible conflicts of interest. One of the original members of the panel recused himself because he had been represented by one of the defendant’s lawyers in the past. He was replaced by Ivetta Macejkova, former head of the Constitutional Court.”, reports toi.org
Over the past months, Slovak law enforcement has continued its quest to root out corruption linked to top politics. Many of the suspicions and scandals uncovered by Jan Kuciak and his colleagues at Aktuality.sk have been confirmed by prosecutors and courts.Â
