The man identified as the shooter of Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, based upon his photo in a video of the assassination attempt, is Juraz Cintula. While the authorities were holding back on naming their suspect, they have put Cintula’s wife under protective custody and assumedly are also questioning her. Cintula, in a word, has had his buttons pushed by any and all of the anti-authority issues pushed by “color revolution” operators and the oppositionist party, “Progressive Slovakia.” And PS has been at the head of a nasty assault against Fico’s government since his election last year.
Only on May 10, Fico had released a video message addressing the danger from PS’s pumping of vitriol into the population. “The Progressive Slovakia voters are cursing government politicians in the streets and I am just waiting to see when this frustration, which is deepened by [three key media outlets,] Dennik N, SME and Aktuality, will turn into the murder of some of the leading government politicians.”
Early indications suggest that one central concern of Cintula that has stood out for years is his anti-immigrant core. Cintula’s 2015 novel, Efata, is said to be an overt attack against the Roma (“Gypsies") and the lack of government actions against them. In January 2016, he spoke to a paramilitary group, Slovenski Branci ("Slovenian Conscripts"), emphasizing that such groups should be allowed to protect “the inhabitants, the culture, tradition, culture” from migrants coming from outside of Europe. They should be able to take actions without waiting for authorities to act. He valued “the ability to act without submitting to the order of the State” since “hundreds of thousands of migrants” are arriving in Europe and, in this context, the Conscripts want to protect Slovakia from their influence, acting as true ‘patriots’.” Of some note, Cintula is said to have worked as a security guard at a shopping mall and there had gotten into one or more incidents.
It was shortly after his 2016 appearance with Slovenski Branci, that he founded his curious “Hnutie proti nasiliu” ("Movement Against Violence") party.
Curiously, the feeble attempt to tie Cintula to Moscow involves the characterization of Slovenski Branci as being pro-Moscow. However, separate from the dubious allegation that Slovenski Branci is pro-Moscow, Cintula was not connected to the group, any more than his general praise for paramilitaries for their possible role in dealing with immigrants. Further, the idea that Moscow would want Fico assassinated is nothing more than “shade” being thrown on the situation, to be repeated by the mindless.
The source of this “pro-Moscow” claim appears to be a young Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi, whose online description offers that he is “currently a Hubert H. Humphrey (Fulbright) fellow at Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University, where he takes courses in accountability and investigative journalism while continuing to work on his projects related to uncovering Kremlin disinformation and propaganda. He is based in Phoenix, Arizona and Washington, D.C.”
Otherwise, he seems to have started his career in 2015 and gained some notoriety for his 2019 articles targeting a connection between Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and then U.S. President Donald Trump. He also exposed in 2019 the “Soviet-linked” International Investment Bank’s suspicious move to Budapest.
