Yesterday evening the Slovak police were involved in a curious case in which a police officer and the perpetrator were shot. The case was unusual as it involved a Slovak man who had agreed with a Swiss ‘client’ to kill, quarter and then eat him.
The incident took place in the village of Kysak in the Kosice Region as part of a planned police operation. Following e-mail agreement, the Swiss man started to worry after realising that the Slovak man was serious about carrying the cannibalistic actions out, and so he contacted Swiss police.
The Swiss authorities then used Interpol to contact the Slovak police, who sent an agent in place of the Swiss man to meet the cannibalistic Slovak at the agreed meeting point. The Slovak man had agreed to kill, cut up and progressively eat the Swiss man, and the arrangement was voluntary with no money to change hands.
As soon as police were sure that the Slovak man had all the necessary tools to commit the crime, they started to move in. Realising this, the would-be cannibal pulled out a gun, forcing police marksmen to open fire. The man was hit five times, but still managed to shoot at the impersonating agent, who was unlucky to be hit through the shoulder, which was not protected by his bulletproof vest.
Interior minister Daniel Lipsic and police commissioner Jaroslav Spisiak made their way to the crime scene to inform of the details of the case. Spisiak explained that the Swiss man had agreed to be doped, stabbed through the heart, then cut up and stored in the ground before being gradually eaten by the flesh-hungry 43-yr old Slovak from nearby village of Sokol.
The Slovak man had 4 legal firearms and everything in his possession needed to carry out the perverse crime, such as knives, saws, body bags, and even peppers to throw off the scent of dogs and other animals once the man’s body was to be stored in the ground awaiting consumption.
The voluntary cannibal is now in hospital with serious injuries, while the police agent’s condition has been stabilised, even though the bullet went through his shoulder into his chest cavity.
David well said!!
such copyright or second hand google illustrated graphics could also leagally cause conflict if not careful. better to be safe than sorry with images..
I agree i think our imagination of circumstances can create its own images without violating, human degrading images, which can often be found on primative Slovak News TV Channels!!! car crashes!! showing dead bodies which have been lying in the street for somtimes more than 30 mins to an hour!!! degrading which ever way you look at it!!!
The story its self is enough for me and most readers i guess!
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‘Very strange comments below under such a delicate news article’ ???
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‘Why do people care what other people eat anyway’
‘ I though the picture was amusing’
‘I doubt she actually digested his body parts’
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OMG Mr Boyd !!!! Is this from a person on your team?? 🙂 ‘Bilbec’ comes to mind here!!!
No, nobody from here.
(reiterates earlier retraction)
[…] for Slovakia. It almost makes the movie “Hostel” seem plausible, especially as the cannibal story managed to hit the headlines before the end of the […]
[…] behind the Slovak cannibal Matej Curko (43) as he died in hospital yesterday afternoon from the five gunshot wounds that he received to the head and body in the police operation on Tuesday. photo credit: StreleckĂ˝ klub […]
Eating dogs, baby burgers, cannibals…. Doesn’t sound good, does it? But if you ever find yourself in the Zeppelin in Zilina, I for one will be able to prove what a gentle soul I really am.
I don’t have any friends, thank god….
I assume you lot are all good mates taking the piss ?
If not I would be very worried about meeting some of you for a beer …:-)
Thanks James. Trust me, I am not being over-sensitive or jumpy (maybe you read me wrong) and the whole point of The Daily is to act as a community news service, where people can voice their opinions etc., so I am very happy to receive comments. Twice already the images I selected have offended people, and twice I took them off. I accept all criticism happily, but have the right to give back as well, and it would be refreshing if people talked about the subject of the article itself.
Why do people care what other people eat anyway. I though the picture was amusing, I doubt it was a real situation photograph anyway.
“What is the strangest thing you have eaten?, is a question I often ask students during conversational English lessons, one woman, who will remains nameless replied “Her neighbours husband” I doubt she actually digested his body parts
John, sorry but I find that response over-sensitive. If this is such a huge concern for you – and I recall you saying that you reported the ‘eating dogs’ article only as a news story – why not close stories intended ‘only to inform’ to comments?
Personally, I have absolutely nothing to say about cannibalism itself as a social problem, other than the inadequately banal statement that it’s shocking and horrific, so I would read a report like this simply to get my information and move on.
But the fact was that, because the comments box had been opened, there was an interesting debate below the story about the use of images in the media. Here, I felt I had something to say, so I joined in.
True enough, that discussion had moved away somewhat from the original article but that’s the nature of the online media beast when you open yourselves up to comments. What would you say if you were getting 300 people commenting, as they do on, say, the UK Guardian? Be happy that so many readers were taking an interest in your stories, or fret that they were straying too far from the intentions of the original piece?
My verdict is that you’re doing fine work. This is the best source of Slovak news in English, no question. Just don’t get so jumpy when people come on with their own points of view.
What bothers me here (as in the case of the ‘baby burger’ and also the eating dogs’ article) is that readers don’t discuss the issue that is being reported, but instead concentrate on how we report it or what picture we use. It actually amazes me that people are more interested in that, or is it just easier being critical than discussing some social problem?
Interesting discussion but I feel an essential point has been missed, which is that there is a distinction. I agree with Fergus that shocking images are indeed necessary to bring home the horrors of war. In fact, often it’s the image that remains imprinted afterwards, as with the kids fleeing the napalm attack in Vietnam.
But I also agree, and strongly, with David. In a case like this, there isn’t a real need to ‘bring home the horror’ and the image can lead to greater sensationalism.
To try to clarify, why do, say, Markiza and Joj show vivid pictures of the aftermath of car crashes? Not, I dare to suggest, to warn us all of the dangers associated with driving. It’s to serve the base need large sections of the population seem to have for horror and sensation.
The decision of a serious broadcaster of whether to show images from a war or conflict is, I would argue, another matter entirely.
But certainly a very worthwhile debate and credit to the Daily for keeping an open mind.
Perverse? Yes. Loathsome? Definitely. Crime? No. Red-handed? Certainly not.
The real crime here is the pigs going in to disrupt a voluntary transaction with deadly force. No, WAIT. Not even a transaction! The pigs bring in their impostor, who then ends up shooting a man five times when he tries to defend himself against him imminent kidnapping.
It’s hard to really blame the Slovak police, though. They are like trained but vicious dogs, ready to obey. The blame should really lie with whatever Swiss cop who took the guy’s call in the first place.
Here’s how that call should have gone:
“Client”: Hey policeman, some guy in Slovakia has agreed to kill me, cut me up and eat me!
Swiss policeman: Well, assisted suicide is perfectly legal*, and the taboo against eating human flesh has as much rational grounding as belief in the Easter Bunny. Call back when you’d like to report an actual crime.
* It’s not, most places, but should be.
Shock value has always been used to help sell papers. Albeit in this case, maybe other Slovakians will recognise the face over the name, and perhaps it could help solve other missing person cases? Just a thought. Also, many people lack the ability to picture an image in their mind. They lack colour, and only see in black and white.
Point taken David. I understand, but the news is so shocking that I feel it deserves a shocking picture. This is obviously not intended to insult readers ability to understand, as you say, but merely a way of driving home the gory point itself. In today’s world of over-stimulation and TV violence, sometimes an image like this one seems justified to me as it is more shocking than mere words, and so invokes stronger, and possibly more appropriate, reactions. My apologies if it offends you. If you really insist, I can remove it.
Maybe it’s me but the picture of an actual cannibal here seems superfluous (
rather like the previous picture of a baby in a burger after the Hungarian PM’s comments). This is getting to be like the BBC breakfast news for idiots where we need an actual picture of everything mentioned just in case we have such a poverty of imagination that we cannot understand without pictorial aids. Where does this end? Logically can we expect a a picture of an actual rape just in case we need an illustration. For those of us ‘haklivy’ types can we credit the readers on here with some powers of imagination (and more importantly – taste).
In My humble opinion and experiences, it takes shocking images for people to seriously register what is going on in the world. You can describe a painting or any physical thing with words alone, only when you see it you really appreciate it.
I cast my mind back to the Balkan conflict of the late 90’s when one of the Irish news papers showed a picture of a slain child. The child was about 2 years of age if even that. The baby was thrown on a heap of bodies like discarded manikins’, her arms open in a position as you would see any young child sleeping. It took that image, an image I will take to my grave, to make me realize the horror of the situation in the Balkans.
So NO, we should not be sheltered, the press should use any and all images available to them to convey the news, people should not be sheltered from it, they have the choice, look or don’t look. People who do not wish to see the real world as it is should avert their gaze. It take’s a lot to get people off their arse’s to do something about what’s happening in the world. History tells us this.
The media have a responsibility to report the news how it is in its entirety. Would Band Aid and Live Aid have had the impact it did if Sir Bob & Co. did not show images of starving dying children? And another example; if the coalition forces in Iraq or Afghanistan suffered 6,000 casualties in one day in one action and we were informed and shown the images, how long would it take public opinion to sway the leaders into taking some serious action. By the way, that is 10 per cent of the casualties suffered by the Brits on the 1st of July 1916. Look at the out cry the Omagh bombing created when images of the destruction we seen world wide.
The press has an obligation to report the news and show it for what it is.
Imagination, hmmmmm, I have no idea what to imagine in regard to cannibalistic images, other than that of a person with very curly hair and a bone through their nose. As for taste, I will stick to conventional meats. But I do not think most atrocities or crimes are committed in the best possible taste.
If you ask me, for someone to have an imagination vivid enough to imaging such things, they must have fantasized about if for a substantial period of time or seen pictures of it before.
Firstly, I do not feel as I have the right to insist on it being removed.
Secondly, I am not against shock pictures: the pictures from Vietnam, Nazi concentration camps etc. But this picture was not the actual crime but an ILLUSTRATIVE picture of cannibalism. Therefore, somewhat superfluous and rather like the picture of the baby in a burger bun: can we find any other serious news journal which uses pictures of babies in a burger or stock/illustrative pictures of cannibalistic actions. If it is from some actual criminal event, some atrocity, some aircraft crash etc. that is different. Using generic libray stock pictures serves no purpose – that is the difference here.
If this newspaper published a picture of the late Princess Diana’s body in the car crash I think some might question the taste but I think its publication would be defensible. Publishing a some cartoon or ‘manufactured’ picture of a ‘princess’ decapitated or mangled would serve no purpose. My argument is pretty specific and is not connected with the shock value of pictures which I accept are necessary whether from Serbia, Zimbabwe, Syria or elsewhere. The LIBRARY/STOCK/ILLUSTRATIVE picture is rather amateurish for any news organ wishing to be taken seriously journalistically speaking.
sorry for posting again, but I’ve read all the posts. Just to be specific, I am prepared to discuss the underlying issues, but I am not squeamish about the shock value of pictures. Coming from Northern Ireland I’ve seen emough of them in the past – but they were from real, concrete events, from the actual explosion, of pieces of victims blown up. If there is not access to specific pictures, illustrative pictures serve no purpose.
I hope this clarifies by original contribution which may have been misconstrued.