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CRIME

Police detain Italian mafia suspects named by murdered Slovakian journalist

Slovak police on Thursday detained several Italian businessmen named by murdered journalist Jan Kuciak in an explosive report on alleged high-level corruption linked to the Italian mafia, as his killing sparked fresh demonstrations in the EU state.

Published: 1 March 2018 13:55 CET
Police detain Italian mafia suspects named by murdered Slovakian journalist
People in Bratislava hold a vigil for murdered Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and his partner Martina Kusnirova. Photo: Vladimir Simicek/AFP

Prosecutors in Italy suggested that the notorious Calabrian crime syndicate the 'Ndrangheta may have been behind the killing of Kuciak, 27, and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova, who were found shot dead at their home near Bratislava on Sunday.

Slovak police commander Tibor Gaspar told reporters that the individuals taken into custody during raids in the eastern town of Michalovice were “persons mentioned” by Kuciak in connection with the “Italian track”.

Slovak media reported that among the seven held was Italian businessman Antonino Vadala – the owner of several companies – and some of his relatives, alleged by Kuciak to have links to 'Ndrangheta and contacts in the Slovak government.

The prosecutor in the Italian region of Calabria, Nicola Gratteri, told Italian radio meanwhile that “it is likely that the families of the Calabrian mafia are behind the murder” of Kuciak.

“It is obvious that 'Ndrangheta is capable of this,” he said.

He was echoed by Italy's anti-mafia prosecutor, Gaetano Paci, who called the journalist's murder a “milestone”.

“It shows that the 'Ndrangheta is starting to be afraid of those who want to show a truth that many are struggling to see,” he told told Italy's Rai News TV.

The murder has raised concerns about media freedom and corruption in Slovakia and sparked international condemnation.

Candlelit protest

Kuciak's last, unfinished investigative report raised possible political links to Italian businessmen with alleged ties to Calabria's notorious mafia supposedly operating in eastern Slovakia.

His article, posthumously published on Wednesday by aktuality.sk, focused on fraud cases allegedly involving Vadala and said he was linked to leftist Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico's entourage.

In an angry rebuke of the allegations, Fico showed reporters fat stacks of cash totalling €1 million – a reward he has offered for information that could lead to the killers.

A candlelit protest in the capital Bratislava called by an opposition party drew around 1,000 people on Wednesday night. Other anti-corruption protests and memorials are planned for Friday across Slovakia and in Prague, London and The Hague.

Murdered Slovak journalist was 'investigating Italian mafia'
A memorial to journalist Jan Kuciak in his newsroom. Photo: Vladimir Simicek/AFP

Fico accused the opposition Wednesday of using the murder as a “political tool to get people out on the streets and gain power”.

Thousands of mostly young Slovaks joined anti-graft rallies last year demanding the dismissal of senior government and police officials for alleged foot-dragging on fighting graft.

Transparency International ranks Slovakia as the seventh most corrupt EU member.

The European Commission formally asked Bratislava on Thursday to account for the use of EU farm subsidies after Kuciak's report alleged that some of the suspects police detained on Thursday had been skimming funds.

'Mafia in Slovakia'

In his posthumously published report, Kuciak wrote: “Italians with ties to the mafia have found a second home in Slovakia. They started doing business, receiving subsidies, drawing EU funds, but especially building relationships with influential people in politics – even in the government office of the Slovak Republic.”

Troskova, 30, and Fico's national security council officer Viliam Jasan, both of whom allegedly had past dealings with Vadala, said on Wednesday they had given up their posts for the duration of the murder investigation, but
“categorically rejected” any wrongdoing.

Maria Troskova, a close Fico aide, was forced out on Wednesday after Kuciak alleged she had ties to Vadala, purportedly involved with 'Ndrangheta.

Interior Minister Robert Kalinak said on Facebook on Thursday that Italian police, Europol, the FBI and Scotland Yard had pledged to help with the investigation.

'End of an era'

The Kuciak shooting followed the October car bomb murder of campaigning Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia — who exposed crime and corruption on the Mediterranean island.

Marek Vagovic, the head of the team of investigative journalists at aktuality.sk, told AFP that Kuciak's murder was “the end of an era” in Slovakia.

“This murder will change the atmosphere in Slovakia in a way that there will be much harder pressure on the investigation of serious crimes, on revealing corruption and clientelism, on revealing interconnection of politics and business.”

Journalists investigating the same story as Kuciak said they have obtained police protection.

Fico, who once told journalists they were “dirty, anti-Slovak prostitutes” and used terms like “plain, silly hyenas” and “slimy snakes” to describe the media, has vowed his government is committed to the “protection of freedom of speech and the safety of journalists”.

CRIME

Amanda Knox reconvicted in Italy in slander case linked to 2007 murder

Amanda Knox was again found guilty of slander on Wednesday, in a retrial in Italy related to her infamous jailing and later acquittal for the 2007 murder of her British roommate.

Published: 5 June 2024 12:33 CEST
Amanda Knox reconvicted in Italy in slander case linked to 2007 murder

The American cried in court in Florence as she was sentenced to three years already served for having accused, during police questioning, an innocent bar owner of killing 21-year-old Meredith Kercher.

“I’m very sorry I was not strong enough to have resisted the police pressure,” Knox told the judges.

“I was scared, tricked and mistreated. I gave the testimony in a moment of existential crisis.”

She was 20 when she and her Italian then-boyfriend were arrested for the brutal killing of fellow student Kercher at the girls’ shared home in Perugia.

READ ALSO: ‘I hope to clear my name’: Amanda Knox back in Italy for slander retrial

The murder began a long legal saga where the pair was found guilty, acquitted, found guilty again and finally cleared of all charges in 2015.

But Knox still had a related conviction for slander, for blaming the murder on a local bar owner during initial questioning by police.

In October, Italy’s highest court threw out that conviction on appeal and ordered a retrial, which began earlier this year in Florence in Knox’s absence.

The night she was interrogated was “the worst night of my life… I was in shock, exhausted”, she said on Wednesday.

“The police interrogated me for hours and hours, in a language which I hardly knew, without an official translator or a lawyer”.

“I didn’t know who the killer was… They refused to believe me”, she said.

‘Something so horrible’

Kercher’s half-naked body was found in a pool of blood inside the roommates’ cottage in November 2007. Her throat had been slit and she had suffered multiple stab wounds.

During police questioning, Knox implicated Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba, who then spent almost two weeks behind bars before being released without charge.

Knox was convicted of slandering him in 2011 and sentenced to three years already served.

But she said she was yelled at and slapped during the police investigation – claims that prompted a separate charge of slandering police, of which she was cleared in 2016.

Amanda Knox arriving in court in Florence, on June 5th, 2024. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)

The police had found a message on Knox’s phone they said was proof she and Lumumba were plotting.

“They told me I had witnessed something so horrible that my mind had blocked it out,” Knox said on Wednesday. “One of the officers cuffed me round the head and said ‘remember, remember!’,” she said.

“In the end… I was forced to submit. I was too exhausted and confused to resist.”

The European Court of Human Rights in 2019 ruled that Knox had not been provided with adequate legal representation or a professional interpreter during her interrogation.

That ruling, which found her treatment “compromised the fairness of the proceedings as a whole”, was cited by Italy’s top court last year when it ordered the retrial.

‘Monster of Perugia’

Knox said last October that at the time of Kercher’s murder, Lumumba “was my friend”.

But Lumumba’s lawyer, Carlo Pacelli, described how Knox’s accusation changed his life.

“When he was accused by Amanda he became universally considered the monster of Perugia,” he told reporters outside court.

Knox was hugged by her husband in court – the same one where she was reconvicted of murder in 2014 – as reporters looked on.

Her murder trial attracted global interest, much of it salacious, focusing on prosecutors’ claims that Kercher died as part of a sex game gone wrong.

But Italy’s highest court, when it acquitted Knox and former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito once and for all, said there had been “major flaws” in the police investigation.

One person remains convicted of Kercher’s murder — Ivorian Rudy Guede, who was linked to the scene by DNA evidence.

He was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years for murder and sexual assault, his sentence later reduced on appeal to 16 years.

Guede was released early in November 2021.

Now 36 and with two young children, Knox is a journalist, author and campaigner for criminal justice reform.

She first returned to Italy five years ago to address a conference on wrongful convictions, appearing on a panel entitled “Trial By Media”.

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