After nearly three years of court proceedings, including a series of held and postponed hearings, a higher court rejected the appeal of private prosecutor Krešimir Antolić, a former executive of GNK Dinamo Zagreb, as unfounded and upheld the first-instance ruling acquitting Nikola Plečko, known as Nik Titanik, caricaturist for 24sata and president of the Croatian Cartoonist Association, of charges of insult and defamation. The charges related to three caricatures published in the sports supplement of 24sata at the end of March 2020.
As Titanik stated, the ruling prevented and, he hopes, permanently eliminated, a legal precedent that could have jeopardized all future cases involving criticism of public figures. Such a precedent, he warned, would have significantly threatened media and democratic freedoms in Croatia and restricted the work of caricaturists, humorists, satirists, stand-up comedians, photomontage artists, and other similar creators, as well as journalists who critically report on public figures and issues of public interest.
It is worth recalling that Nikola Plečko, known as Nik Titanik, was sued over his caricatures and accompanying text published in 24sata by Krešimir Antolić, former head of the General Crime Department of the Zagreb Police Directorate and a former board member of Dinamo. The dispute concerned three caricatures in which he used the expressions “pandur” (cop) and “druker” (snitch).
In his defense, Plečko stated that it is widely known that caricature is one of the strongest forms of public criticism, as reported by 24sata.