GENERAL Prosecutor Jaromír Čižnár dropped charges against journalist Dušan Karolyi who was prosecuted for libel. He issued the decision after scrutinising the files, the SITA newswire reported.
Čižnár also cancelled the decision of the prosecutor of the district prosecutor’s office in Prešov that had dismissed Karolyi’s complaint against the charges.
The general prosecutor ordered to check the legality of Karolyi’s prosecution in the beginning of September. The former reporter of the Trend economic weekly was threatened with five years in prison for the article titled Prešov’s Catch XXII published in August 2013.
Karolyi wrote about the case of former employee of the Office for Fight against Organised Crime (ÚBOK), Jaroslav Dujava, who was suspected of abusing his powers as a public official. According to Karolyi, Dujava allegedly broke the law when using frivolous and excessive force to detain Alexander Ducár, one of the owners of Kompit, a company possessing lucrative real estate in Prešov.
A police commando unit detained Ducár at noon and transported him across the whole city, which made it seem like the police had caught a high-ranking mafia member. Ducár allegedly ordered the beating of one of Kompit’s owners, but the investigation has never proved this, Karolyi wrote in Trend.
Karolyi pointed to the procrastination of the Prešov District Court, which has been dealing with the Dujava case since August 2005, when a prosecutor’s office filed a lawsuit against him. Due to its inactivity, Prešov District Court judge Marián Mačura cancelled the prosecution against Dujava and another three former police officers because the case is statute-barred.
“The case from Prešov shows the depth of the fall of the law enforceability [in Slovakia],” Karolyi wrote in August 2013.
Though Karolyi did not mention the whole name of the police officer, the Prešov police investigator claimed he caused harm. Karolyi submitted complaint against the criminal prosecution, but the Prešov district prosecutor dismissed it.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
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