Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Annex
The Case of Hedviga Malinová several operative officers in the room; besides, director of the Regional Investigation Bureau of the Slovak Police Force in Nitra along with other police officers monitored the interrogation from the adjacent room. Horák left the room at one point; then he returned and made a gesture to switch off the cameras. Later, he explained that technicians had told him about some technical complications; Kvasnica, for his part, believes that this was the point at which Horák decided to pressure the witness. The transcript does not feature any details on how long were the breaks due to cassette exchanges or the technical malfunction; also, it fails to explain why Malinová had to remain at the police station for two more hours after the questioning that according to the transcript ended at noon. Horák ex post explained that he initially wanted to take Malinová to the crime scene but after he came to a conclusion that she had lied, he considered it pointless. It also turned out that the videotapes from the interrogation that were kept from Malinová’s legal counsel for over a year had been guarded by Ladislav Gužík, the false evidence case investigator. liNVESTiqATORS wIho biREAk tIhe Iaw The series of interrogations at the Office of Attorney General revealed that case investigators had repeatedly violated valid regulations while investigating the case. For instance, the forensic surgeon did not have a sufficient command of even basic terminology; employees of the Institute of Criminal Expertise of the Slovak Police Force did not have referential handwriting specimens and biological material samples. Even worse, case investigators seem to have violated the law. Case investigator Peter Horák was unable to explain satisfactorily why he did not send the victim’s blouse to a biological analysis; the garment was only subjected to chemical analysis but case investigators seem to have ignored even this analysis as they did not examine the origin of oil stains on the blouse. Also, Horák was unable to explain why he did not ask Malinová for a handwriting specimen and why he was so sure that the application for passport and student’s record book that were compared to handwriting on the blouse had been filled out by Malinová herself years before. During investigation it turned out that on August 30, 2006, Horák had requested a printout of telephone calls placed by Malinová’s university teachers on August 20-29, 2006, arguing that he aimed to find the assailant. Horák refused to answer the question by Malinová’s legal counsel whether he assumed that the teachers might have been involved in the attack. Horák explained the fact that 317
