[4] The incident caused a media sensation and her case has ever since represented a highly controversial and debated issue of Hungary-Slovakia relations.
[6] Malina took her case to the European Court of Human Rights, challenging what she calls the "inhuman and humiliating" conduct of the Slovak officials.
[10][11] By September 2006 the police had concluded their investigation, and at a press conference attended by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Minister of the Interior Robert Kaliňák, the latter stated "it is beyond doubt that the attack did not happen", supporting his assertion with several pieces of what he claimed were evidence, including DNA samples.
[13] In a July 2007 interview with the Slovak Weekly .týžden, Malina said that Robert Fico and Kaliňák initially believed what the police concluded, but later only kept repeating those statements due to outside pressure.
[14] She also said that she felt calm and had finished her fourth year at university with an excellent result, so it is not true that she had panicked before a test, and had beaten up herself to evade the exam – as stated by Slovak officials.
[17] Béla Bugár, then leader of the Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK-MKP) questioned the results of the investigation, calling attention to the fact that medical examination initiated by the police did not take place until 10 days after the case, allowing time for bruises to disappear.
[19] Packa said the attitude of Malina and her lawyer was "the despising of the work of Slovak police",[11] and Kaliňák claimed that Gál was trying to make it into a political issue.
In the meantime, state-owned Slovak television channel STV broadcast a documentary directed by Eugen Korda, which claimed Kaliňák did not always tell the truth in connection with the case.
According to the test results Ms. Hedvig Malina did not make up the story regarding the assault in the park and she told the truth when she claimed that the attackers had been shouting that "in Slovakia people speak Slovak".
[26] At the end of November the police initiated criminal prosecution against Malina, who, in turn, brought the case to the Constitutional Court.
He was later identified as Peter Korček, a former secret agent and currently a member of the Christian Democratic Movement, a Slovak political party.
"[33] This alibi later turned out to be two contradicting statements from his mother and uncle, who said that Robert at the time was either at home sleeping or at a holiday place with his friends.
[35] Examinations following the above statements suggested that Malina's handwritten testimony had not been copied accurately in typing, notably, an important sentence had been left out[36] though this was not confirmed by Slovak police.
[37] In August 2007, a former high-ranking police officer, Jozef Šátek, filed a complaint against Fico, Kaliňák and Packa, claiming that they had abused their power in connection with the Malina case.
[44] Lantos said he was considering introducing a congressional resolution condemning the ethnic attacks,[44] saying, "The blame rests 100 percent with the Slovak side.
"[44] In December 2007, (15 months after the beating) the Slovak police gave the video cassettes about the initial Malina hearing to Roman Kvasnica, her lawyer.
Malina then took her case to the European Court of Human Rights, challenging what she calls the "inhuman and humiliating" conduct of the Slovak officials.
She commented her decision that she was not fleeing the prosecution procedure and possible court case in Slovakia and added that she just wanted to protect her children from repeated police harassment she had to endure.
... "Thanks to the overtime put in by Béla Bugár and his ethnic-Hungarian SMK party, Malinova appears to be the victim of 'Slovak extremism', and not of a 'Hungarian game.'