- The hearing in the case of the murder of Ján Kuciak continues at the Specialized Criminal Court.
- Peter Tóth confirmed the authenticity of the skeins that Kočner sent him from prison.
- Marian Kočner and Alena Zsuzsová are facing charges for ordering the murder of Kuciak.
At the Specialized Criminal Court (ŠTS) in Pezinok the main hearing continues in the case of ordering the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and in the case of the preparation of the murders of prosecutors also on Tuesday by questioning the witness Petr Tóth. On Monday (June 22), this former member of the Slovak Information Service made a spontaneous statement and answered the prosecutors’ questions.
Among the defendants, only Marian Kočner is present in the hearing room. The others requested proceedings in their absence. A witness at the start of Tuesday’s main hearing confirmed the authenticity of the so-called bobbinswhich Marian Kočner sent him from prison. According to Tóth among other things, they also talked about the defendant’s request that Norbert Bödör inquire with the then special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik about the possibilities of intervention in favor of Kočner.
Tóth said that he received an indirect message that if Kováčik intervened in favor of Marian Kočaner, the prosecutor of the then Office of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, Ján Šanta, would have organized a press conference, because at that time Kočner was in custody only in connection with the promissory note.
He explained that the so-called attorney Andrej Šabík delivered the coils to him with the fact that these are documents produced in custody by Marian Kočner. “I did not write these scrolls myself, which in my opinion is very easy to prove through forensic means. Everything I say about the contents of the scrolls is my interpretation of those texts based on my experience with the nomad or other persons.” underlined Tóth.
A witness on Monday spoke about the circumstances of the acquisition of suspicion against the defendants Kočner and Alena Zsuzsová in the matter of ordering Kuciak’s murder. Ultimately, he said, this suspicion led him to contact law enforcement. He identified “education for absolute respect for human life” as the motive for contacting the police.
In the case of the murder of Kuciak from February 2018, during which she died in Veľká Mača (Galanta district) also his fiancee Martina Kušnírová, the couple Kočner and Zsuzsová are facing indictment from her order. The Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic annulled the previous two judgments. The case was brought to the ŠTS for the third time. The perpetrators of the murder, Miroslav Marček and Tomáš Szabó, had earlier received 25-year non-parole sentences, the intermediary of the murder, Zoltán Andruskó, had received 15 years of non-parole.
In addition to Marian Kočner and Alena Zsuzsová, Dušan Kracina also faces indictment for preparing the murders of prosecutors and Darko Dragić. According to the indictment, the order for the murders of Maroš Žilinka and Daniel Lipšic should have arrived in autumn 2017. In the case of Petr Šufliarske, in 2018. However, they were not implemented. Szabó has been legally convicted since 2022, who confessed to the preparation of the murders.
