Five years after the murder of Giorgos Karaivaz, the case now stands as a test of press freedom, rule of law and political credibility not only for Greece, but for the European Union, writes Murat Yildiz.
Murat Yildiz is an investigative journalist and Editor-in-Chief at Bosphorus News.
A Greek crime reporter was executed outside his home in broad daylight. Five years later, no one has been convicted. The same country that cannot solve a journalist’s murder has been running industrial-scale surveillance against its own press. This is not just a Greek failure. It is a European one.
It was a Friday afternoon. Giorgos Karaivaz had just finished his shift at Star TV’s daily programme and was driving home. He parked his car on Themon Anninou Street in the Athens suburb of Alimos at around 2:30 p.m. on 9 April 2021. Two men on a black motorcycle pulled up beside him. They used a silenced weapon. Neighbours heard nothing. Karaivaz was hit by thirteen bullets and died at the scene.
The execution was professional. The killers had tracked his movements from the television studio. Security camera footage later showed them surveilling the area around his building in advance, confirming the hit had been planned. They escaped immediately. No one stopped them.
Karaivaz was 52 years old. He had spent three decades covering police and crime for Greek newspapers, television and his own website, bloko.gr. He knew the Greek underworld from the inside. He had sources inside organised crime and inside law enforcement. He was also a key witness in a major case against the Greek mafia, scheduled to testify before he was killed. His close associates believe that is why he was targeted.
Five years later, no one has been convicted of his murder.
What the investigation produced
The Greek police initially described the killing as a professional contract hit linked to organised crime. That assessment was correct. It was also, in retrospect, almost the last thing the investigation got right.
The first significant break came in April 2023, two years after the murder, when Greek police arrested two individuals on suspicion of involvement in the killing. It was presented as the first concrete step after a prolonged period of stagnation that had drawn sustained international criticism. The two brothers were charged and the case proceeded to trial.
The trial collapsed. On 31 July 2024, the Athens Mixed Jury Court acquitted both defendants, ruling that the crime had not been proven beyond reasonable doubt. The prosecution had sought a conviction. What emerged during the proceedings, however, went beyond the verdict itself.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) noted that the trial had proceeded under what it described as “disturbing conditions.” One piece of evidence, a compact disc containing the journalist’s telephone data, had been found stapled and physically damaged. The chain of custody for one of the most critical pieces of evidence in the case had been compromised. That finding cast a shadow over the entire evidentiary record and was never officially explained.
The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism that tracks and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU member states, noted that key evidence had been mysteriously destroyed during the investigation. The family appealed the acquittal, arguing that evidence and testimonies had not been properly assessed. That appeal was rejected at the level of cassation. The case was then taken to Greece’s highest criminal court. That avenue was also closed.
In December 2024, the public prosecutor of the Supreme Court issued a Certificate of Final Decision for the two acquitted suspects, effectively ending that line of prosecution.
The same month, the Athens Mixed Jury Court issued a separate ruling that established something legally significant and practically useless: it determined conclusively that Karaivaz had been murdered because of his journalistic work. The Greek judiciary had recognised the motive. It had convicted no one. Two other suspects remain on a wanted list. No additional arrests have been made.
Roy Pavlea, the lawyer representing Karaivaz’s mother and sister, was direct on the fifth anniversary: “The state has taken no action to investigate the masterminds behind the brutal murder of Giorgos Karaivaz. The case is not closed, given that the masterminds have not been identified. The entire family is asking the state not to forget George and to pursue the issue of moral responsibility; we wonder why it has not done so.”
His wife, Statha Karaivaz, posted a single line on social media on 9 April 2026: “5 years away from us.”
The systemic problem
Karaivaz’s case is not an anomaly in Greek criminal justice. It is a data point in a pattern.
Between 90 and 95 percent of organised crime-related murders in Greece remain unsolved, according to figures cited by the International Press Institute (IPI). The killing of journalist Sokratis Giolias in July 2010, shot dead outside his Athens home by men posing as security guards, has never been solved either. Two journalist killings, fifteen years apart, both linked to organised crime, both unresolved. That is not a coincidence. It is a structural failure.
The MFRR raised a question that Greek authorities have never answered publicly: why was Europol not brought into the investigation? Europol has extensive experience handling organised crime-related murders across borders. It has the capacity and the mandate. The decision not to engage it, or the failure to do so, has never been explained.
The MFRR also noted something more uncomfortable. Karaivaz had reported on corruption between the Greek police and organised crime networks. His sources were within both worlds. The organisation stated explicitly in its assessment that the risk of some elements within the police being interested in obstructing the investigation could not be dismissed. That is an extraordinary claim to make about a European Union member state’s law enforcement. It was made carefully, on the basis of documented reporting, and it has never been formally addressed.
The Athens Union of Daily Newspaper Journalists (ESIEA) issued a statement on the fifth anniversary of the killing that did not mince words: “As long as the Karaivaz murder remains unsolved, it will be a thorn in legality and the rule of law.”
The State and the press
To understand the environment in which Karaivaz was killed and in which his case has stalled, it is necessary to look beyond a single murder. Greece has not only failed to protect its journalists from organised crime. It has, the evidence now suggests, been actively surveilling them using state-grade spyware.
On 26 February 2026, an Athens court convicted four individuals linked to spyware firm Intellexa for the illegal surveillance of at least 87 people using Predator software. The defendants included Intellexa founder Tal Dilian, his business partner Sara Hamou, shareholder Felix Bitzios, and Krikel owner Yiannis Lavranos. Each received combined sentences of 126 years and eight months, capped at eight years under Greek misdemeanor law. All four remain free pending appeal.
The targets were not random. They included politicians, journalists, senior military officials and business figures. The Hellenic Data Protection Authority identified surveillance across government ministers, advisers to Prime Minister Mitsotakis, lawmakers from both ruling and opposition parties, the Hellenic Parliament, the Ministry of National Defence and the Presidency of the Government. At least 40 Predator targets may have been under simultaneous surveillance by the National Intelligence Service (EYP), which operates under the Prime Minister’s Office, according to reports cited by RSF. No official confirmation has followed.
During the trial, Intellexa founder Dilian told Greek investigative programme MEGA Stories that Intellexa provides surveillance technology exclusively to governments and law enforcement agencies. Intellexa employee Panagiotis Koutsios told the court that company presentations were made only to state agencies. These statements sit directly against the Greek government’s position since 2022: that Predator was operated by private actors without state involvement.
The Karaivaz and Predator cases share more than a common backdrop. During the Karaivaz murder trial, RSF reported that the contacts list on the journalist’s phone, read aloud in court, included the number of former EYP director Panagiotis Kontoleon and Grigoris Dimitriadis, then secretary-general to Prime Minister Mitsotakis and his nephew. The court did not establish a connection between those contacts and the murder. But the presence of those names in the file deepened the political sensitivity of a case that was already producing no answers.
Dimitriadis is also a central figure in the Predator scandal. He resigned from his position in August 2022 after investigative outlets published evidence linking him to Intellexa. He subsequently filed defamation lawsuits against the outlets and reporters responsible. The first suit was dismissed in October 2024 after the court ruled the reporting was accurate and in the public interest. A second lawsuit seeking 950,000 euros in damages remains ongoing. The International Press Institute (IPI), RSF and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have classified both suits as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs). The Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe awarded Dimitriadis its “SLAPP Politician of the Year” designation in 2022.
Spiros Sideris, chief editor of the Independent Balkan News Agency (IBNAEU) and a confirmed Predator target, told Bosphorus News that the referral of court records to prosecutors for an espionage investigation marked “perhaps the first real opportunity for a thorough and credible investigation” after four years of delays. Sideris said he was never given an official explanation for his targeting. The only information he received was confirmation from the Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) that he had been sent a message infected with Predator disguised as a COVID-19 vaccination notice.
EYP surveillance files relating to confirmed Predator targets were destroyed. No official explanation has been made public. ADAE has not complied with a ruling from Greece’s highest administrative court requiring disclosure of the grounds for surveillance.
The picture that emerges from putting Karaivaz and Predator side by side is not one of isolated incidents. It is one of a state that either cannot or will not protect journalists from being killed, that either participated in or tolerated their surveillance by spyware sold exclusively to governments, and that has used legal instruments to punish those who reported on the surveillance. Three distinct mechanisms of press suppression operating in the same country at the same time. Bosphorus News has reported in depth on the Predator conviction and its implications for the espionage investigation that followed, including exclusive comment from a confirmed surveillance target.
Brussels watches, Brussels waits
The European institutions have not been silent on either the Karaivaz case or Predatorgate. But silence and inaction are not the same thing.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution in February 2024, by 330 votes to 254, expressing grave concerns about the state of democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights in Greece. The resolution specifically cited the lack of progress in the Karaivaz investigation and condemned the use of spyware against journalists and political opponents. It called on the European Commission to make full use of the tools available to address breaches of EU values in Greece. In March 2026, the Parliament discussed the Intellexa convictions and rule of law concerns again, returning Greece to EU institutional attention for the second time in two years.
Socialists and Democrats (S&D) Member of European Parliament Cyrus Engerer, who negotiated on Greece in the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE), said at the time of the 2024 resolution: “For months, the European People’s Party (EPP) has been trying to sweep the declining state of the rule of law in Greece under the carpet. Until today, they managed to block the Parliament from adopting a formal position on a country ranked the lowest among EU member states on press freedom for the second year in a row.”
The European Commission’s 2025 Rule of Law Report assessed Greece as a “Stagnator.” Not a backslider. Not a reformer. A country where conditions do not meaningfully change in either direction. A coalition of Greek civil society organisations responded to the report by calling it “flawed and selective,” arguing that the Commission’s assessment fails to confront the systemic deficiencies that independent organisations document continuously.
The Liberties Rule of Law Report 2026, an independent assessment coordinated by the Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties), found that 93 percent of the Commission’s recommendations to member states were simply repeated from previous years, often word for word. For Greece, the result is a cycle of observation without consequence.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has dismissed the criticism consistently. Speaking publicly about RSF’s annual findings, he said: “I think there is no issue on press freedom in Greece.” The RSF 2025 World Press Freedom Index ranked Greece 89th out of 180 countries. It is the lowest-ranking country in the European Union. It has held that position for four consecutive years.
What Karaivaz knew
The evidence that Karaivaz’s killing was directly connected to his journalistic work is now legally established. The Athens court said so in December 2024. But what that work was, and what it threatened, remains largely in shadow.
In his final months, those close to him noted that his writing had become more charged. He was drawing on knowledge of Greece’s organised crime networks that he could not yet openly publish. The network he was investigating, referred to in Greek reporting as the “Greek mafia,” controls protection rackets for brothels and gambling establishments, engages in extortion, and includes retired police officers, lawyers and other figures embedded in Greek public life. It issues death contracts.
Karaivaz was also a key witness in a major criminal trial involving this network. He was killed before he could testify. The trial continued without him. The people who ordered his murder, if they were connected to that case, got what they wanted.
The IPI has asked a question that applies across five years of failed investigation: will the Greek government, police, and judiciary finally confront the organised crime that silenced this journalist, or will they continue to let injustice, mafia influence and threats to press freedom prevail?
The answer, so far, is the second option.
A parallel that cannot be ignored
Any Turkish journalist writing about Giorgos Karaivaz writes with a particular weight.
Turkey has lost 67 journalists to targeted killings since 1909. Abdi İpekçi was shot dead in Istanbul in 1979. Uğur Mumcu was killed by a car bomb in 1993. Hrant Dink was assassinated outside his office in 2007. In most of these cases, the triggerman was eventually identified. The person who ordered the killing was not. The files were left as faili meçhul: unknown perpetrator. The phrase has become a term of art in Turkish public life, a bureaucratic shorthand for organised impunity.
The structure is the same as what happened to Karaivaz. A professional killing. An investigation that moves until it stops. A mastermind who is never named. A family left without an answer.
The parallel is not comfortable for either country. Greece and Turkey spend considerable energy positioning themselves against each other in the Eastern Mediterranean. Their journalists, their press freedom organisations and their publics rarely speak to each other with the kind of candour the situation demands. Turkish press organisations held a joint event on April 6, 2026, marking the Day of Killed Journalists, calling for the release of 15 imprisoned colleagues. The event was important. Karaivaz was not mentioned by name.
That silence is understandable. Turkey has its own urgent crisis: 15 journalists currently imprisoned, a disinformation law used to prosecute reporting, a press freedom ranking of 158th in the world. Solidarity has limits when survival is the priority.
But the silence still says something. The most serious attack on journalism in the European Union in recent years produced no response from the country next door whose journalists know this terrain better than most. That absence is part of the story.
What impunity costs
Journalist Panos Mandravelis, speaking in Greek media, disclosed something that clarified the stakes. He said that someone had told him he had three days to leave the country, or he would face the same fate as Karaivaz. The threat was a direct invocation of the murder, used as a tool of intimidation years after the killing. This is what impunity produces. The crime does not stay in the past. It becomes a warning that can be deployed in the present.
That is the full cost of a murder that goes unpunished. It is not only that one journalist is silenced. It is that every journalist who covers similar terrain now knows the price has been set and the market for consequences is empty. Karaivaz did not just lose his life. His colleagues lost something too: the reasonable expectation that investigating organised crime in an EU member state is compatible with staying alive.
Greece has three overlapping systems of press suppression operating simultaneously. A journalist who investigates organised crime can be killed. A journalist who investigates the government can be surveilled. A journalist who exposes either can be sued into silence. Each of these mechanisms has been used in Greece in the past five years. None has been adequately addressed by the state. None has produced meaningful accountability at the EU level.
The MFRR put it plainly after the acquittals in the Karaivaz case: “The result is that one of the most serious attacks on journalism in the European Union in recent years remains in a state of total impunity.”
Five years. Two acquittals. Two other suspects still wanted. A family still asking why the masterminds have not been pursued. A court that confirmed the killing was because of journalism and then watched the case go nowhere. A spyware conviction that freed its defendants pending appeal. A surveillance apparatus whose files were destroyed before anyone could be held to account.
Giorgos Karaivaz was murdered for what he knew. Europe still has not answered for what it refuses to confront.
The original article published by Bosphoros News can be found here.
Caption: Giorgos Karaivaz [International Press Institute (IPI)]
Updated: April 10, 2026 – 05:58