On April 9, 2021, two unidentified men on a motorcycle approached veteran crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz while he was returning to his home in the Athens suburb of Alimos, and the motorcycle’s passenger shot him several times, killing him at the scene, according to news reports.
Police found 13 shell casings and said that 10 bullets hit the reporter, one in the left palm, one in the neck, two in the head, and six in the chest, those reports said. In CCTV footage released in the days after the killing, the attackers can be seen waiting for Karaivaz, shooting him, and fleeing the scene, according to news reports.
Reuters quoted a police official saying that the killing appeared to be a “professional hit” and that the motive was not immediately known.
Karaivaz covered crime and police issues for the privately owned broadcaster Star TV, previously contributed reporting on those topics to other Greek outlets and broadcasters, and founded Bloko, a news website covering law enforcement, according to those reports.
In the weeks before he was killed, Karaivaz published articles on Bloko on topics including police procurement policies, how a criminal suspect allegedly blackmailed police officers into granting free services, police policies amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and a commentary article calling on police to tell the “whole truth” about a recent traffic accident near the parliament building.
Lefteris Economou, the deputy minister for citizens’ protection, told Greek public broadcaster ERT on April 10 that the killing may have been related to feuds within organized crime groups, saying that gangs had been in “open war” for the last several years and were suspected of commissioning contract killings.
On April 28, a law enforcement source told the Greek daily Kathimerini that police were investigating whether the killing was linked to Karaivaz’s reporting on alleged ties between the Hellenic Police and organized crime, and his coverage of the 2018 killing of a former police officer under investigation for such ties. In June 2020, Karaivaz published an open letter on Bloko criticizing the slow progress of that investigation.
Karaivaz’s colleagues at Star TV told DW that the journalist had not mentioned receiving any threats before the attack, and authorities said that he had not requested police protection or a gun license for self-defense.
In a statement sent to CPJ via messaging app, Manolis Asariotis, a friend and colleague of Karaivaz at Bloko, said that the journalist had written “dozens of stories trying to reveal the way organized crime is connected with corrupted policemen and politicians” and said he suspected that the killing was a hit by an organized crime group.
On April 28, 2023, police announced the arrests of two men, aged 40 and 48, whose names were not disclosed, and charged them with participating in the journalist’s murder.
The men, who are brothers, denied their involvement in the killing during questioning in the Athens prosecutor’s office on May 3, and were put into pretrial detention, according to news reports. Police claimed that they used a motorcycle and a van to approach and escape from the scene of the crime.
On July 31, 2024, a Greek court found there was insufficient evidence to convict the two men and acquitted them. The prosecutor had argued that the men, who pleaded not guilty, shot Karaivaz at least 10 times and linked the assassination to the journalist’s reporting on organized crime.
On September 10, an appeals court rejected a request by Karaivaz’s family to appeal the acquittal and have the case retried.
CPJ emailed the press department of the Athens prosecutor’s office for comment in August 2024 but did not receive any replies.