THE CASES

Click here to find the full case studies or click on the title of each case.

The present report is based on the review of twelve criminal cases from Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Spain, selected as illustrative cases because of the extensive disclosure of information by public authorities as well as the wide media coverage which accompanied the proceedings

Bulgaria

The Sotirya murder (Bulgaria, 2019)

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In August 2019, a six-year-old girl was found dead in the village of Sotirya, near the town of Sliven. The suspect, a 21-year-old man from the same village, was arrested by the police several hours later. Upon his arrest, the man confessed that he had committed the crime and was later accused of rape and homicide. Upon decision of the court, the person remained in detention throughout the proceedings. In January 2020, he was found guilty, sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and ordered to pay a financial compensation to the victim’s family. The brutality of the crime and the age of the victim provoked serious media attention. The case received extensive coverage from the moment the police reported the crime up until the trial’s closure. Public reactions, mostly at the local level, were also strong, as while the proceedings went on, several demonstrations took place demanding a more severe punishment of the defendant.

The car accident in which journalist Milen Tsvetkov died (Bulgaria, 2020)

In April 2020, a popular Bulgarian journalist died in a fatal car crash in Sofia. Tsvetkov was waiting at a red light when an over-speeding car, driven by a 22-year-old male, collided with his vehicle. The driver who caused the accident and the two passengers were unharmed and immediately escaped the crime scene, but with the help of eyewitnesses, the authorities arrested them in less than 48 hours. As the victim was a famous journalist, the public interest was significant and the accident was reported instantly by almost all media channels in the country. Journalists were hurrying to reveal findings from the investigation, as well as personal details about the accused driver and the other passengers involved. Shortly after the accident, criminal proceedings started against the 22-year-old driver who was charged for causing the car crash under the influence of drugs. His name and pictures were soon published in the media alongside information that he had taken illegal substances before the accident. The two passengers were also identified, and one of them turned out to be the son of a Bulgarian MP. In the next months, various details of the accused driver’s private and family life were published. In July 2021 the trial is still ongoing.

Information about the case first appeared publicly on social networks where victims of the fraud were trying to warn other users about a Facebook profile offering fake travel services. In October 2017, a man was publicly arrested for fraud. After the arrest, the case suddenly gained high public attention, as it concerned the creation of a false persona on social media, illegally using photos obtained from a French citizen’s social media profile. By posting attractive travel photos, the accused presented himself as an experienced travel agent who offered plane tickets to remote destinations at low prices. The fake Facebook account helped the perpetrator build a significant database of personal information including access to clients’ credit cards, from some of which unauthorised payments were registered. In the course of the pre-trial proceedings, the journalists presented extensive information related to the alleged fraudster’s family, early childhood, character and habits, despite the fact that at that time the police had not officially announced that there was a clear connection between the accused person and the false profile, and no official charges had been pressed. In 2018, the defendant confessed and signed several agreements to serve imprisonment and to compensate some of the fraud victims.

Spas from Kocherinovo fraud case (Bulgaria, 2017)

Greece

The murder of Manolis Kantaris at Athens city center (Greece, 2011)

On 10th May 2011, Manolis Kantaris (M.K), a Greek citizen aged 44, was killed by three foreign nationals who were attempting to steal the victim‘s camera. M.K. was about to drive his wife, who was in labour, and his mother-in-law to the maternity hospital, but at the street corner, three men attacked him, aiming to grab the video camera hanging on his shoulder. As the man was trying to resist, he was stabbed in the back and the neck and died on the spot. All three perpetrators were foreign nationals –two from Afghanistan and one from Pakistan. Following police investigations, the two suspects from Afghanistan were apprehended. The Afghan nationals confessed that they were at the crime scene, and claimed the third person from Pakistan had murdered M.K. The case received extremely wide media coverage and the public interest continued for years after the crime. Considerable material from the case file was unofficially disclosed and published. The perpetrators’ foreign nationalities provoked even more extreme public reactions to the case.

Professor “Fakelakis” (Greece, 2018)

At the beginning of 2018, a complaint was submitted against a professor at the Technological Educational Institute of Central Macedonia, Serres (TEI), Greece. His students claimed that they were forced to give money to the professor in order to pass the exams. The accused professor Kleanthis Konstantinoudis, was severely ridiculed and humiliated by the media from the day of his arrest. All news titles addressed him with the insulting nickname “Fakelakis” (in Greece when you engage in under-the-table transfers of money to public officials, the expression is that you hand “a small envelope” or fakelaki in Greek). The hostile public climate exerted pressure on the judicial and academic authorities’ early decision-making, in particular the pre-trial detention of the professor for 10 months and the definite dismissal from his position as professor at the TEI of Serres, long before the beginning of the trial and his conviction.

On 30 April 2012, a police operation was conducted in the city center of Athens, as part of a wider governmental strategy to address the increase of HIV infection in Greece. Ninety-six women were apprehended and transferred to local police stations for ID checks. There, they were mandatorily tested for HIV, and eleven women, including the 32-year old Katerina, were found HIV-positive and detained. The prosecutor issued an order for the disclosure of photos and personal information of the arrested HIV positive women, including sensitive medical records. Katerina and all ten women were prosecuted with felony charges without a lawyer and remanded in pre-trial detention for nearly a year. The case received great attention by the media and provoked a significant social response. In the then political turmoil and amid general elections, the case was being constructed by public authorities and the media that foreign women working as illegal prostitutes were responsible for the increase of HIV infections and had to be constrained and punished. During the pre-trial proceedings, the press featured titles like “the prostitutes with AIDS”, while at the other end of the spectrum there was a big wave of solidarity towards the detained women, led by human rights organisations. The persistent public outcry against the violation of Katerina’s and the other women’s rights led to a minimisation of the charges and their release from prison. In November 2014, two years after the arrest, Katerina committed suicide. In a letter she wrote: “The damage done to us will eternally hunt us and our children.” Two years later, the court decided that all co-defendants were not guilty.

Katerina, one of the cases of HIV positive women (Greece, 2012)

Italy

The murder of Pamela Mastropietro (Italy, 2018)

In 2018, in Italy begun the case of the murder of an 18-year-old girl called Pamela Mastropietro. The main suspect was a Nigerian man with an expired residence permit and a criminal record for drug dealing. The case received wide media coverage and had a strong impact on society. Pamela’s murder provoked a xenophobic raid, which was exploited in the 2018 general election campaign in Italy. Immigration was the main topic in the political debate at the time and the case was ineluctably linked to a stereotypical representation of immigrants as drug dealers, rapists, and murderers.

The murder of Antonino Barbaro (Italy, 2014)

In 2014, the body of a man with 27 stab wounds was found in the countryside near the town Francofonte in Italy. A couple of years later, two local fishermen were arrested as the main suspects for this murder and spent 130 days in detention. Following their arrest, local and national newspapers reported the case as solved. However, from the very first moment, the evidence framework against the suspects was particularly weak and later it was discarded. The trial ended without a hearing and the two men were released from detention. No newspaper or TV show considered necessary to correct the information, despite the fact that the suspects had requested it.

Institutional communication in raids (Italy)

This case study differs from the others, as it is not focused on a particular criminal case. It examines whether the institutional communication of raids, through both traditional and social media, violates the rights of suspects and accused and specifically their right to be presumed innocent until a final verdict is pronounced in court. The analysis scrutinises a practice adopted by two Italian law enforcement authorities, Polizia di Stato and Arma dei Carabinieri, to publish videos of the arrest of suspects and present it to the public on their social media channels.

Spain

The Herd (Spain, 2016)

The celebration of the popular Spanish festival San Fermín in 2016 was marked by a sexual assault against an 18-year-old woman. The five men accused, aged between 25 and 28, allegedly performed various sexual acts against the woman´s will. In 2018, the court considered that although the sexual relations had not been consensual, the defendants had not used violence or intimidation to coerce the victim, so they were not convicted of rape. This ruling outraged part of Spanish society, which demanded a conviction for rape. The case received significant media coverage and many details of the trial and defendants were published in the press. For the most part, the identities of the perpetrators were anonymised, but some media published exposing materials, including their photos and names, obtained from unofficial sources. The final judgement found the accused men guilty and imposed penalties for non-consensual sexual acts to 15 years of imprisonment, based on the consideration that the facts constituted the crime of rape.

The Process (Spain, 2017)

The case is known as the “trial of the Process”. The 2017 referendum on the independence of Catalonia in Spain resulted in several high-profile offenses. To prevent the referendum from being held, the Attorney General’s Office filed a complaint with the National High Court against the members of the Catalan government for rebellion, and another with the Supreme Court against the members of the parliamentary bureau – president, vice-presidents, and secretaries - for the same acts. The whole process was extensively covered by the media. Headlines on front pages stated "hijacking of democracy" and even a "coup d'état". The Catalan independence process generated significant social and political tension in Spain, and the trial of those accused of organising the referendum took place in this context.

The Gabriel Cruz case (Spain, 2018)

On 27 February 2018, in a small village in the south of Spain, Las Hortichuelas, a boy aged 9, disappeared. As a result of a large search operation, the victim’s stepmother, Ana Julia Quezada, was arrested for commiting murder, while driving Gabriel’s body in her car to hide it. After the arrest, the woman confessed to the killing of her stepson Gabriel Cruz, but claimed that it was an accident and that she had no intention of ending his life. During the trial, the defence argued that she was under the effect of anxiolytics, which diminished her capacity to control her actions and understand their consequences. However, the people’s jury determined that Ana Julia Quezada was guilty. On 30 September 2019, the woman was sentenced to permanent revisable imprisonment for the murder. From the moment of the child’s disappearance, the case generated considerable media interest, occupying a large part of the country’s morning talk shows for days. After the arrest of the woman, who was a black woman of Dominican descent, there were certain concerns that media treatment to her had racist features and contributed to reinforcing racist attitudes in society.