It appears that the long-drawn Cervanová case has been concluded after 38 years, with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) turning down the appeals of six Slovak men convicted of the murder of young medicine student Ľudmila Cervanová in Bratislava in 1976.
The SME daily reported on Tuesday that The European Court in Strasbourg decided after more than three years that the conduct of the respective Slovak courts that had dealt with the issue was indeed correct. The verdict of the Court cannot be appealed against. Ľudmila Cervanová went missing on July 9, 1976 in the Bratislava suburb of Mlynská dolina. Her body was found later near Bratislava. After five years of investigation, the police connected six men from Nitra to the murder, with the respective regional court finding all the men guilty in 1982. After the split of Czechoslovakia and the change of regime, the Slovak Supreme Court reopened the trial in 2002. Two years later, the regional court confirmed the verdicts of 1982, and the Supreme Court followed the suit in 2006. The six convicted men were sentenced to between 3 to 13 years in jail.
