A former soldier told a court on Monday he had been hired to kill Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak - a reporter known for his corruption investigations whose murder triggered anti-graft protests that brought down the prime minister.
Miroslav Marcek said he shot dead 27-year-old Kuciak and the reporter's fiancee Martina Kusnirova in their house outside Bratislava in February 2018.
Marcek, 37, said his cousin - co-defendant Tomas Szabo - had approached him with an offer to do the contract killing and drove him to the house.
Marcek told the Special Criminal Court in Pezinok, north of the capital, that he had not known who Kuciak or Kusnirova were when he killed them.