Not Only Kuciak. In Slovakia, Another Journalist Is Missing: Miroslav Pejko

What happened to Miro? He was a brave reporter in Slovakia dealing with energy: had he discovered something big? Is his disappearance linked to the killing of Kuciak and his girlfriend?

The same press officers who, in 2005, had managed for the Slovak government the damage of image that the splatter movie, “Hostel”, had caused the small central European country, are now desperately intent on resizing the wave of revelations that risks unearthing hidden truths; not only on the murder of the Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak and his girlfriend Martina Kušnírova, but also on the disappearance of another young journalist of whom nothing is known since 2015: Miroslav Pejko.

Thanks to the unsustainable pressure of the public opinion of the country, shocked by the execution of the two young people and disgusted by the revelations of possible connections between Prime Minister Robert Fico and the Calabrian entrepreneur Nino Vadalà, the Ministry of the Interior reopened the investigation concerning the disappearance of Miroslav Pejko, another very young colleague who vanished three years ago.

Miro was working for the economic daily Hospodarske Noviny for whom he wrote mostly articles related to the energy sector. The parents describe him as an ambitious boy, the most intelligent of the family.

The memory of Italian colleague Ottaviano Nenti is similar: “I had met Miroslav at a press conference of the European Commissioner for Education in Budapest, we were both into university, research and training. He was a human being with big values and great ideals and at the same time very sunny, what happened to him has shocked me “.

On the 17th of March 2015, Miro left the house with a blue and green black shirt and green sneakers, carrying only the keys of the apartment he shared with two friends. His two cell phones, personal documents, money and credit cards were neatly arranged on the table in his room with no clue that would suggest any reason for his disappearance. Even his notebook had been left on as if he had only walked away for a few minutes.

In the absence of clues and in suspicion that Miro was prone to the occasional abuse of substances, the police effort to resolve the case has been formal, if not merely apparent, over the years. Zuzana, the friend who reported her disappearance to the police, continues to look for him. 

“I continue to hope that he is alive, to think that one day I will be able to see him again”.  The family, rightly, can not do it because, as brother Marian explains, “for us it was a shock, we have no information, they did not let us know anything, this is the most terrible thing”.

Only some of his colleagues (John Boyd and Ivan Brada) immediately connected the disappearance of Miro to the previous disappearance in 2008 of their colleague Pavol “Palo” Rýpal, an investigative reporter who dealt with organized crime, and his sister kept alive the case.

Fabio Benati, a member of the FNSI and of the Order of Journalists, also believes that “shedding light on these cases is our duty and to restore truth to the people with whom they have shared work and affections, both to support colleagues and colleagues, interviews and reports denouncing the mafia infiltration in the gangli of the economy, of finance and of the globalized society “.

Intended to do everything possible to find out the truth, we interviewed everyone who knew him personally or professionally, gaining the trust of his closest friends and relatives. They gave us some personal items and work tools, perhaps allowing us to preserve and ensure the integrity of important clues in relation to his disappearance that the Slovak police have had no interest to examine until now.

This article has been written in collaboration with Fanpage.it