A man who admitted shooting Slovak prime minister Robert Fico is due to stand trial on terror charges on Tuesday, more than a year after the attack that shocked the central European country.
Fico was shot four times from close range after a government meeting in the central Slovak mining town of Handlova on May 15, 2024, leaving him seriously wounded.
The prime minister underwent two lengthy operations and returned to work two months after the attack. The 60-year-old is serving a fourth term as premier, heading a three-party coalition.
Prosecutors argue that Juraj Cintula sought to “permanently prevent Fico from serving as prime minister, thereby preventing the Slovak government from proper functioning and fulfilling its programme”. Just after the shooting, Cintula told the police he wanted to protest against steps taken by Fico’s government, including the halting of military aid to war-ravaged Ukraine, according to a leaked video.
Cintula, who used a legally owned gun, told the Nový Čas tabloid in May that he did not want to kill Fico: “I did not shoot at the heart or the head.” He said he had plotted the attack for two days and added he was relieved to see Fico survived.
Cintula was originally charged with premeditated murder, but prosecutors later reclassified the shooting as a terror attack. This means they will have to prove Cintula wanted to harm the state, Tomas Stremy, a criminal law professor at Comenius University in Bratislava, told AFP.
Fico himself called Cintula a “product of hatred, an assassin created by media and the opposition.”
