Court in Brussels decided that “nothing suggests that Sky ECC’s data is unreliable” in the case related to the murder of Ardit Spahiu, committed on November 27, 2020.

The jury based its decision, among other things, on messages sent via the encrypted messaging app and decrypted by the police in 2021. Based on this, six of the nine defendants were found guilty, while three others were acquitted of the charges.

The reliability of the Sky ECC data was widely debated during the trial. According to the jury, while “the traceability of the data is not absolute,” there is “nothing that makes the hypothesis of manipulation plausible.” The sheer volume of messages, sent through a multi-layered system, makes forgery “highly unlikely, if not impossible,” according to the reasoning.

The court noted that the Sky ECC data in this case was supported by other elements, such as the footage from ANPR cameras that recorded the individuals’ vehicles and the location data from their regular phones. According to the jury, this combination strengthened the credibility of the digital evidence. The investigation into the murder lasted four years and culminated in a trial that lasted more than a month, in which the phone analysis was central.

The defense, especially that of the main suspect Franc Gergely, repeatedly argued that the Sky ECC data was not sufficiently reliable. They pointed to discrepancies between the index file and the spreadsheet provided by the investigators. This was one of the reasons why the defense requested access to the Sky data source file, but this request was denied.