Ringier will appeal Slota's libel victory

THE RINGIER publishing house will appeal the verdict of the Zilina District Court handed down on Thursday, which orders the publisher to pay €20,000 in damages to Slovak National Party (SNS) party chairman Jan Slota for an article published in the Novy Cas daily. The publishing house strongly disagrees with the court's verdict.

SNS Press Secretary Jana Benkova said that the SNS leader succeeded in his lawsuit against the publishing house Ringier for the article entitled "He Became Boss of Thieves," published in the Novy Cas daily last March.

According to the article, as a young man, Jan Slota was arrested with Jozef Rendek at the beginning of the 1970's in an attempt to cross the border between Austria and then Czechoslovakia. The article features information that Rendek later became a member of a gang of thieves that also committed an armed robbery.

Ringier PR manager Jana Pristavkova wonders why the judge did not take into consideration the fact that after reading the headline and the whole article, everybody must realise that the daily does not call Slota the boss of a gang of thieves, but rather his companion Jozef Rendek.