A Greek court on Wednesday acquitted two men held over the 2021 murder of a prominent investigative journalist, a case that sparked widespread concern about press freedom in the country.
Giorgos Karaivaz, 52, was gunned down in broad daylight in April 2021 outside his home in an Athens suburb by two men on a motorcycle.
Reading out the verdict, presiding judge Andreas Lilos said the two brothers on trial, Ioannis and Efstratios Lalas, were “innocent” of the charges.
Charged with voluntary homicide as suspected hitmen carrying out a contract against Karaivaz, the pair were acquitted on lack of evidence, he added.
“We respect the verdict,” Karaivaz’s sister told reporters outside the court.
“We will await however, we have patience and we will await for the (perpetrators and those who hired them) to be found,” she said.
Ioannis Lalas will remain under police custody and will go on trial in September in connection with another murder.
Defence lawyer Souli Stavri said Karaivaz was killed as part of an ongoing war between crime families.
She said that overall there were “thirty murders that have yet to be solved”, citing “a cycle of blood and blackmail”.
Karaivaz’s assassination was a major contributing factor in press freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) placing Greece in last place among EU states in its annual press freedom report.
The RSF 2024 report published in May puts Greece in 88th place out of 180 countries, behind EU partners Hungary and Poland.
RSF’s head for the European Union and Balkans, Pavol Szalai, called Wednesday’s verdict “a sad week of impunity for crimes committed against Greek journalists”.
In a statement, Szalai said the Karaivaz ruling came just a day after the Greek Supreme Court absolved the country’s intelligence service of involvement in an illegal spyware operation targeting reporters, which caused a major scandal in 2022.
In February, the European Parliament issued a resolution denouncing a hostile media environment in Greece that posed a “very serious” threat to EU values.
The resolution said journalists in Greece faced physical threats and verbal attacks, including from high-ranking politicians, and abusive lawsuits.
Greece at the time dismissed the resolution as “slander”.
In its annual report on the rule of law in EU countries last week, the European Commission said Greece had made progress but called for additional reforms.
It said Greece had bolstered its legal framework against corruption, but called for further safeguards to improve the protection of journalists from abusive lawsuits against them.
Source: AFP
