5.  The applicant was born in 1954 and lives in Slavonski Brod.
6.  The applicant is a local political figure in Slavonski Brod. She was the head of administration for all kindergartens in Slavonski Brod, and during several local elections ran for mayor of that town. While the applicant held the position of head of administration for all kindergartens in Slavonski Brod, Z.B. sought and obtained employment in one of the kindergartens in Slavonski Brod as a teacher. One of the conditions for obtaining such employment was holding Croatian citizenship, and Z.B. presented a certificate confirming such citizenship. At a certain point in time Z.B., as an employee of a kindergarten in Slavonski Brod, was a subordinate of the applicant. In February 2008 Z.B. was appointed head of administration for all kindergartens in Slavonski Brod.
7.  On 23 October 2008 the applicant held a press conference entitled “All victims of the human resources policy of the mayor of Slavonski Brod, M.D.”, where she alleged that the mayor of Slavonski Brod was involved in various irregularities in the employment of civil servants in local public institutions. The applicant thereby also alleged that the mayor had appointed Z.B. as the manager of a kindergarten run by the municipality even though she had used invalid documents and held only citizenship of the former Yugoslavia, and that together the mayor and Z.B. had denied a Croatian war veteran’s daughter employment (see paragraph 11 below).
8.  On 24 November 2008 Z.B. instituted a private prosecution against the applicant in the Slavonski Brod Municipal Court (Općinski sud u Slavonskom Bordu) on charges of defamation related to the above-mentioned statement.
9.  During the proceedings the applicant contended that she had wanted to show all irregularities concerning the mayor’s employment of local civil servants, and that she had learnt that Z.B. had requested Croatian citizenship only after she had been employed as manager of the kindergarten. The applicant also submitted that a councillor in the local assembly had provided her with certain documents concerning Z.B., including an annulled citizenship certificate.
10.  On 21 May 2010 the Slavonski Brod Municipal Court acquitted the applicant on the grounds that the material obtained during the proceedings showed that Z.B. had been registered in 1985 in the register of births of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which at the time had been one of the former Yugoslav republics. She had been registered as a Croatian citizen on 13 October 2008, whereas she had lodged her application for employment at the kindergarten on 12 February 2008. In the circumstances, the Slavonski Brod Municipal Court considered that the applicant demonstrated the veracity of her statements.
11.  On 23 May 2011, upon an appeal by Z.B., the Slavonski Brod County Court (Županijski sud u Slavonskom Brodu) quashed the first-instance judgment and ordered a retrial, on the grounds that not all of the relevant facts had been properly established.
12.  After a retrial, on 26 January 2012 the Slavonski Brod Municipal Court found the applicant guilty of defamation for having said “[the mayor] appointed people who are using invalid documents to crucial positions, for example Z.B., who unfortunately still has citizenship of the former Yugoslavia” and “[the mayor], together with his manager [Z.B.], fired a girl on the pretence that, as the child of a [Croatian] war veteran, she had no right to preferential treatment with regard to employment”. The applicant was given a suspended sentence of sixty days’ imprisonment with a probation period of one year. The Slavonski Brod Municipal Court held that it was a well-known fact that Yugoslavia no longer existed, and that therefore Z.B. could not have Yugoslav citizenship. Moreover, Z.B. had acquired Croatian citizenship in 1992, but her citizenship certificate had later been annulled in 2008 due to some administrative irregularities, and later she had been issued with a new certificate. The Slavonski Brod Municipal Court therefore held that the applicant had uttered untrue information concerning Z.B. in public, amounting to defamation. The applicant was also ordered to pay the costs of the proceedings in the amount of 8,250 Croatian kunas (HRK).
13.  The applicant appealed, and on 30 May 2012 the Slavonski Brod County Court dismissed her appeal, upholding the first-instance judgment.
14.  The applicant then lodged a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Republike Hrvatske), complaining, inter alia, that her freedom of expression had been violated by the judgments of the lower courts.
15.  On 26 September 2012 the Constitutional Court declared the applicant’s constitutional complaint inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded.
16.  The decision of the Constitutional Court was served on the applicant’s representative on 11 October 2012.
17.  On 4 October 2007 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Resolution 1577 (2007), “Towards decriminalisation of defamation”, in which it urged those member States which still allowed prison sentences for defamation, even if those sentences were not actually imposed, to abolish them without delay.