The Slovak authorities are not doing enough to investigate the murder journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova, according to Pavla Holcova from the Czech Center of Investigative Journalism (CCIZ).
In an article published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an investigative reporting platform, Holcova said that if the police do not do their job, journalists will.
“The last time I spoke to Jan was only a few hours before an assassin entered his home and put two bullets into his heart,” wrote Holcova. “When I learned about his death on that Monday morning, a deep, infinite, paralysing winter overcame me. I was chilled by the touch of absolute evil. I am still overwhelmed by that feeling. Half a year later, we do not know who killed Jan or who hired his murderer. And I am afraid we’ll never find out.
“Murders of journalists are hard to investigate. According to statistics compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists, 70% of journalists are murdered because of the story they are working on. Less than ten percent of those murders are ever solved. In comparison, most murders in the Czech Republic and Slovakia have around an 80% chance of being solved.”
According to Holcova, the Slovak police have bungled this case from the very beginning.
One example that Holcova notes is that the head of NAKA, Slovakia’s anti-corruption unit, Robert Krajmer, about whom Jan had written in previous stories, was among the first officials to arrive at the scene after Kuciak’s murder. It remains unclear why he was there. Nevertheless, Krajmer was reposted to the interior ministry.
