Marian Kočner during the Kuciak trial in May 2022. (source: TASR)
“That day, the bitter aftertaste and the expectation of death dominated the defendants’ conversation in Marian Kočner’s Threema [chat application],” claim prosecutors from the Special Prosecutor’s Office.
The day the prosecutors are referring to was February 21, 2018, the day journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kušnírová were murdered.
“Kočner’s message ‘50 →(soon) skull’ is, yes, perhaps a less careful encryption, but a logical outcome of this atmosphere of expectation,” the prosecutors write in their appeal against a ruling by the Specialised Criminal Court in May last year which acquitted Kočner for the second time over involvement in the murders.
The court did, however, found his alleged accomplice, Alena Zsuzsová, guilty of ordering the murders of Kuciak, as well as of prosecutors Maroš Žilinka and Peter Šufliarsky, and a 21-year sentence she was handed in another case was increased to a total sentence of 25 years in prison.
Wednesday marks six years since the murders.
From the 115-page appeal sent by the prosecutors to the Supreme Court it is clear that the Special Prosecutor’s Office is using new arguments in the trial.
