PEZINOK, Slovakia: The alleged mastermind of a Slovak investigative journalist’s murder is due to stand another retrial on Monday, eight years after the crime rocked the central European country.
Jan Kuciak, a journalist investigating high-level corruption linked to influential businessmen and top politicians, was shot dead with his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, both 27. Their deaths sparked the largest protests in Slovakia since the fall of communism, leading to the resignation of the government of Robert Fico, although the nationalist returned to power in 2023.
Accused of ordering the killing, businessman Marian Kocner—who Kuciak investigated—has twice been acquitted but Slovakia’s Supreme Court has annulled both decisions. The latest retrial is to start with a hearing at a special criminal court in the city of Pezinok near the capital, Bratislava, at 8:30 am local time (0730 GMT).
The parents of both victims are expected to attend, according to lawyer Peter Kubina, who represents Kuciak, with 43 hearing dates scheduled. Kocner, 62, has denied ordering the killing of Kuciak in the village of Velka Maca in February 2018.
“I am not a saint, but I am not a murderer either,” Kocner said in 2020 in a statement in court. Kubina told AFP he does not expect the defendant to change his stance, “as he has repeatedly declared his innocence in the past”.
Kocner is being re-tried together with alleged accomplice Alena Zsuzsova, 51. Three others have been sentenced over the crime, including two hitmen, serving 25 years in prison.
‘Necessary evidence’
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the trial was “a new opportunity to resolve a crime that undermined press freedom in Slovakia and in Europe”. Both Kocner and Zsuzsova were originally acquitted in 2020, but the Supreme Court reversed their acquittals after finding “several mistakes” in the previous trial.
Kocner was acquitted once again in 2023, while the court found Zsuzsova guilty, sentencing her to 25 years in prison. But in 2025, the Supreme Court annulled the verdicts on grounds that included “failure to examine all the necessary evidence” and ordered a new panel of judges to hear the case.
Slovak courts rarely take such steps, but Kubina said that it was not surprising, “given the scale of the case and the reasons the Supreme Court declared”. “Logically, there was no other decision to be made,” Kuciak’s father, Jozef, reacted to the court’s ruling in 2025 .
Both Kocner and Zsuzsova are currently serving hefty prison sentences for other crimes. Kocner was sentenced to 19 years in prison for forgery in 2020, while Zsuzsova got a 21-year sentence for her involvement in the murder of a mayor.
Kuciak had written several stories on graft and shady dealings involving Kocner, who had ties to senior politicians in the central European country of 5.4 million people.
In the last article Kuciak worked on, which was published after his death, he had alleged links between the Italian mafia and the government led by Fico. In another case, investigative journalist Pavol Rypal remains missing since 2008.
Investigators opened criminal proceedings last year into his disappearance for the “particularly serious crime of premeditated murder,” Jaroslav Macek, deputy regional prosecutor in Nitra city, told AFP. — AFP