Slovakia’s Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok yesterday walked back his earlier comment, that the suspect in the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Robert Fico might be a “lone wolf,” announcing that an investigation team had been set up to look into whether the suspect “was operating in a certain group of people who might have incited and supported each other.” He cited one particular curiosity, that the intelligence services had found that, two hours after the attack, the suspect’s Facebook and communication history had been deleted.
The gunman, 71-year-old Juraz Cintula, had several hot buttons, that brought him to anti-government protests, including those organized by the party Progressive Slovakia and by anti-immigrant groups. (Progressive Slovakia is centered around aligning the country closely with NATO and the EU.) Fico himself had warned, in a video message on April 10, of the danger of assassinations being stoked by vitriol poured into the public. He stated: “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.”
Eštok’s description, “a certain group of whom might have incited and supported each other,” certainly includes the rabid media frenzy in Slovakia, organized with the help of Western funding, against anyone refusing to “drink the Kool-Aid” of permanent warfare against Russia. Fico had not only stopped weapons shipments to neighboring Ukraine but had also taken on the organized bias in the media. Cintula, as he fired his weapon at Fico, had called out against Fico’s move to restrain foreign influence in the Slovakian media.
