(Reuters) -A Slovak court found businessman Marian Kocner innocent on Friday for the second time in a case alleging he orchestrated the 2018 murder of an investigative journalist that had shaken the country and triggered mass protests against graft.
The Specialised Criminal Court in Pezinok cleared Kocner of ordering the murder of Jan Kuciak, who was 27, and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova, a judge said in a verdict streamed live by news website
The court had reached the same verdict in 2020 citing lack of evidence, but the country’s Supreme Court later ordered a retrial. The new verdict can again be appealed.
Journalists at the trial reported that the victims’ families walked out of the court in protest.
Kuciak and Kusnirova were shot dead at their house outside Bratislava by hired hitman Miroslav Marcek, who was handed a 23-year sentence in 2020. Two other people involved in the murder have also been sentenced.
A fourth, Kocner’s associate Alena Zsuzsova, 48, was found guilty for the murders, as well as planned murders of three prosecutors, and given a 25-year sentence on Friday.
“I absolutely don’t understand this. Zsuzsova found guilty, Kocner innocent,” Kuciak’s father, Jozef Kuciak, told reporters outside the court in comments broadcast by SME newspaper’s website.
Kocner, 60, has repeatedly pleaded not guilty.
Kuciak had investigated relations between politicians and business, including the Italian mafia. Kocner had verbally threatened Kuciak, who had investigated his business practices.
The murders sparked mass protests, forced long-term leader Robert Fico to step down as prime minister, and ushered in a new government in 2020 whose main election promise was to clean up corruption and sleaze.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka and Robert Muller in Prague; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Andrew Cawthorne)
