Probe into dead journo in doubt

BRATISLAVA: Slovak police may have inadvertently destroyed evidence through negligence at the scene of the murder of an investigative journalist, his family’s lawyer said.

The case prompted mass street protests and the prime minister’s resignation.

Journalist Jan Kuciak, who had written about political corruption in Slovakia, was found shot dead along with his girlfriend at their home in February.

They were both 27. As well as forcing the resignations of veteran prime minister Robert Fico, his interior minister and Slovakia’s police chief, the case also exacerbated worries about media freedom in ex-communist eastern Europe. No one has been charged with the murder, which a prosecutor said was probably a contract killing.

The Kuciak family’s lawyer, Daniel Lipsic said the two bodies were moved without being examined by a forensic surgeon at the crime scene and this led to an incorrect initial pronouncement of the time of death.

“I don’t understand why more experienced investigators from the National Crime Agency (NAKA) were not called immediately, and arrived at the crime scene hours after the district police,” Lipsic said on Thursday.

“Some evidence was not secured immediately but was only discovered in photographs from the crime scene,” said Lipsic.

Pictures from the crime scene published by the Slovak media also show that NAKA’s anti-corruption section chief, Robert Krajmer, who does not directly investigate murders, was present.

The police first denied Krajmer was at the crime scene and later issued a correction saying he had “carried out tasks related to the investigation”. – Reuters/ African News Agency