Slovakian Charged in Capturing ‘Was Towards All the things’

He wrote darkish, erotic verse and poems that includes torture and ache. He additionally self-published a e-book that railed towards Roma folks and requested why Slovakia had not produced a homegrown model of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist.

“The place is the Slovak Breivik? Has he not been born but? And what if he has been?” he requested within the e-book. “I didn’t shoot anybody. I informed myself — I’ll write a e-book.”

Then on Wednesday, the 71-year-old former coal mine employee, onetime stone mason and lifelong malcontent was charged with opening fireplace at point-blank vary on Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia.

As quickly as information broke that an unidentified man had shot Mr. Fico in central Slovakia, it was apparent to Milan Maruniak, a retired coal miner, who should be accountable.

“I used to be 99 % certain it was him. It couldn’t be anyone else,” mentioned Mr. Maruniak, a longtime colleague of the person who has been charged with “tried premeditated homicide” however nonetheless has not been named by the authorities.

Wednesday’s taking pictures, the worst assault on a European chief in a long time, despatched shock waves throughout Europe.

However the truth that the person who had lived on this provincial city was arrested got here as no actual shock to some who knew him. “He was all the time so bizarre and indignant,” Mr. Maruniak mentioned. “It was solely a matter of time earlier than one thing occurred.”

Slovakia’s prosecutor has positioned an embargo on info regarding the case, and banned the police from disclosing the identify of the person who has been charged. However the prosecutor’s workplace mentioned “it could not be mistaken” to establish the person as Juraj C., the identify broadly reported by the Slovakian information media. It isn’t clear if the suspect has a lawyer.

Officers say the shooter was a “lone wolf,” an unhinged particular person appearing just for himself — an account of the crime that matches the profile sketched by individuals who knew Juraj C.

On Friday, nevertheless, law enforcement officials visited the condominium block the place he lived and took video footage from safety cameras. Ondrej Szabo, the supervisor for the advanced, mentioned that investigators needed to see if anyone had visited the person’s condominium within the days main as much as the assault. Mr. Szabo mentioned the person by no means struck him as harmful and sometimes went for walks hand in hand together with his spouse. The couple have two youngsters.

Video footage and images of the shooter launched quickly after the assault confirmed a bearded man whom Mr. Maruniak and different residents of the city, Levice, mentioned they acknowledged as Juraj C., an area identified for his cranky conduct and resentful perspective.

“I used to be not stunned it was him,” mentioned Maria Cibulova, a member of Rainbow, an space literary membership, to which Juraj C. additionally belonged.

She didn’t like his poetry a lot. “I’m a romantic and all the time in search of good issues,” she mentioned, “however he was all the time writing about ugly, unfavorable issues.” When Juraj C. shared his work at bimonthly membership conferences, she recalled, different members reacted with extra alarm than admiration. “It was all the time so unusual and unfavorable,” Ms. Cibulova mentioned of his work.

One poem, “The Hut,” featured the mountains of Slovakia recast as elements of the feminine anatomy, whereas “The Face” was dominated by descriptions of torture and ache. Each poems have been included in a self-published e-book that was seen by The New York Occasions.

Politicians on each side of a deep political divide in Slovakia that’s cut up between supporters and foes of Mr. Fico have offered the shooter as a product of the opposing camp. However individuals who know him say he by no means sided clearly with both, however jumped on any trigger that allowed him to specific his anger.

But there may be one trigger, based on individuals who know him, that he has caught with for many years: an abiding hostility towards Slovakia’s minority Roma inhabitants. Mr. Maruniak mentioned that had been an obsession of Juraj C.’s because the Seventies, after they labored collectively at a coal mine. “Gypsies and Roma,” a e-book written and self-published by Juraj C. in 2015, included an overtly racist poem in regards to the minority: “On the physique of civilization there’s a tumor of criminality rising.”

On different issues, nevertheless, he usually switched sides.

In 2016, for instance, Juraj C. supplied public help for Slovenski Branci, or Slovak Conscripts, a paramilitary group identified for supporting Russia. In a press release of help, he mentioned he admired the group’s “skill to behave with out approval from the state.”

Two years later, nevertheless, he started a bitter feud with one other member of the literary membership who had posted a message on Fb expressing unease about torchlight parades in Ukraine by radical nationalists. He denounced his fellow author, who had labored in Russia greater than twenty years earlier than, as a Russian agent paid by the Kremlin to tarnish Ukraine.

Juraj C.’s pro-Ukrainian views turned steadily stronger as he turned towards Russia, his earlier beacon, notably after the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion in 2022. “He abruptly turned extraordinarily anti-Russian,” mentioned the membership member, who requested that his identify not be printed as a result of his household feared retribution.

In 2019, Juraj C. stopped attending conferences of the literary membership and appeared unusually indifferent when he bumped into folks he had identified for years on the road.

“He was off in his personal world and actuality,” Mr. Maruniak recalled.

A path of often-contradictory statements and affiliations through the years has given Slovakia’s politicians a wealth of fabric with which to spin the accused man’s views. The truth that the literary membership in Levice known as Rainbow has fueled claims that he’s an L.G.B.T.Q. activist, a job that may clarify his hostility to Mr. Fico, a champion of conventional household values.

However Ms. Cibulova, who was president of the literary membership for a number of years, mentioned the membership had no affiliation with L.G.B.T.Q. causes.

The primary particular person to establish a suspect was Danny Kollar, a Slovak who lives in London, from the place he runs certainly one of Slovakia’s most generally adopted and vituperative social media retailers.

Mr. Kollar, who traffics in conspiracy theories, instantly linked the taking pictures to Progressive Slovakia, an opposition occasion, claiming that the shooter was a celebration supporter. The occasion’s chief dismissed that as a lie.

Ms. Cibulova mentioned it was forbidden to debate politics or faith at conferences of the literary membership, so she had no clear thought of the person’s politics, aside from that “he was towards all the things.”

“He had one thing inside him towards the injustice that he felt had been completed to him in life,” she mentioned.

In a short private biography Juraj C. submitted to the writers’ group, he mentioned he had been “recognized as a insurgent by state energy” within the Communist period, and had been fired from his job as a technical employee at a coal mine in close by Handlova, the city the place Mr. Fico was shot on Wednesday.

In keeping with his personal account within the literary membership’s journal, in 1989 he turned the chief of Levice’s protest council, a department of a nationwide anti-Communist group led by Vaclav Havel, who later turned the Czech president.

However that, Mr. Maruniak mentioned, isn’t true. He mentioned Jurjaj C. was stored at arm’s size by activists within the anti-Communist motion, who noticed him as too radical and unreliable.

“No person actually favored him,” Mr. Maruniak mentioned. “He was by no means a part of the group. He was by no means content material with something. He might by no means actually be a part of any group.”

In his 2015 e-book, Juraj C. gave what now reads like an account of his personal private evolution. It got here in a bit a few infamous Slovak assassin, Jan Harman, who killed eight folks in a taking pictures spree in 2010.

“They declared him insane, however he wasn’t insane, he simply couldn’t carry the burden anymore,” Juraj C. wrote. “He doesn’t need to curse anymore, he doesn’t need to hate anymore. He’s worn his personal right down to that unknown edge.”

Sara Cincurova and Marek Janiga contributed reporting from Bratislava, Slovakia.