He wrote dark, erotic verses and poems depicting torture and pain. He also self-published a book criticizing the Roma and asking why Slovakia didn’t produce a homegrown version of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist.
“Where is the Slovak Breivik? Is he not born yet? And what if he was?” he asks in the book. “I didn’t shoot anyone. I said to myself – I will write a book.”
Then on Wednesday, the 71-year-old former coal miner, a former stonemason and lifelong disgruntled man, was accused of opening fire on Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico at close range.
As soon as news broke that an unidentified man had shot Mr. Fico in central Slovakia, it became obvious to Milan Maruniak, a retired coal miner, who was responsible.
“I’m 99% sure it’s him. It couldn’t be anyone else,” said Mr. Maruniak, a longtime colleague of the man accused of “intentional murder” but not yet named by authorities.
Wednesday’s shooting, the worst attack on a European leader in decades, sent shock waves across Europe.
But the arrest of this man from a small provincial town didn’t really come as a surprise to some who knew him. “He was always weird and angry,” Mr. Maruniak said. “It’s only a matter of time before something happens.”
Slovak prosecutors have ordered a ban on providing information related to the case, and also prohibited police from revealing the name of the accused man. But the prosecutor’s office said “it would not be wrong” to identify the man as Juraj C., a name widely reported by Slovak media. It is unclear whether the suspect has a lawyer or not.
Officials say the shooter was a “lone wolf,” a heartless individual who acted only for himself — an account of the crime that fits the profile sketched out by people who knew Juraj C. .
However, on Friday, police went to the apartment complex where he lived and recorded video from a security camera. Ondrej Szabo, the complex’s supervisor, said that investigators wanted to see if anyone had visited the man’s apartment in the days before the attack. Mr. Szabo said that man never hit him dangerously and often took his wife’s hand for walks. the couple has two children.
Video and photos of the shooter released shortly after the attack showed a bearded man whom Mr. Maruniak and other residents of the town, Levice, said they recognized as Juraj C., a The locals are famous for their surly behavior and resentful attitudes.
“I’m not surprised it was him,” said Maria Cibulova, a member of Rainbow, a regional literary club of which Juraj C. is also a member.
She didn’t like his poetry very much. “I am a romantic and always look for good things, but he always writes about ugly and negative things,” she said. When Juraj C. shared his work at bimonthly club meetings, she recalls, other members reacted with wariness rather than admiration. “It’s always strange and negative,” Ms. Cibulova said of her work.
One poem, “The Hut,” describes the mountains of Slovakia recast as part of the female anatomy, while “The Face” is primarily depictions of torture and pain. Both poems were included in a self-published book reviewed by the New York Times.
Politicians are on both sides of one Deep political divisions in Slovakia The division between Mr. Fico’s supporters and enemies saw the shooter as a product of the opposition. But those who know him say he never explicitly takes sides, but rather finds any excuse that allows him to express his anger.
However, according to those who know him, there is one cause to which he has been associated for decades: persistent hostility towards the Roma minority in Slovakia. Mr. Maruniak said it had been Juraj C.’s obsession since the 1970s, when they worked together at a coal mine. “Gypsies and Roma,” a book written by Juraj C. and self-published in 2015, includes an openly racist poem about minorities: “On the body of civilization there is a growing criminal tumor.”
However, on other issues, he frequently changed sides.
For example, in 2016, Juraj C. asked the public to support the Slovenski Branci, or Slovak Service Forces, a paramilitary group known for its support of Russia. In a statement of support, he said he admired the group’s “ability to act without state approval.”
However, two years later, he began a bitter feud with another member of the literary club, who posted a message on Facebook expressing discontent about torchlight parades in Ukraine by ultra-nationalists. He accused his fellow writer, who worked in Russia more than two decades ago, of being a Russian agent paid by the Kremlin to tarnish Ukraine.
Juraj C.’s pro-Ukrainian stance grew stronger as he turned against Russia, his former beacon, especially after the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion in 2022. “He suddenly suddenly became extremely anti-Russian,” the club member said. that his name was not published because his family feared retaliation.
In 2019, Juraj C. stopped attending literary club meetings and appeared strangely detached when running into people he had known for years on the street.
“He was immersed in his own world and reality,” Mr. Maruniak recalled.
A series of often contradictory statements and positions over the years have given Slovak politicians plenty of material to sway the accused’s position. The fact that the literary club in Levice is called Rainbow has sparked claims that he is an LGBTQ activist, a role that may explain his hostility to Mr. for traditional family values.
But Ms. Cibulova, who served as president of the literary club for several years, said the club has no links to LGBTQ causes.
The first person to identify the suspect was Danny Kollar, a Slovak living in London, where he runs one of the most followed and influential social media outlets in Slovakia.
Mr. Kollar, who trafficked in conspiracy theories, immediately linked the shooting to the Slovak Progressive Party, an opposition party, claiming that the shooter was a party supporter. Party leaders dismissed that as a lie.
Ms. Cibulova said that discussing politics or religion at literary club meetings is prohibited, so she did not know clearly about this man’s political views, other than “he was against everything”. rank”.
“He had something inside him to fight the injustice he felt had happened to him in life,” she said.
In a brief personal biography that Juraj C. sent to the writers’ group, he said he had been “identified as a rebel” by state authorities during the Communist era, and had been fired from his engineering job. surgery at a coal mine in nearby Handlova, the town where Mr. Fico was shot on Wednesday.
According to his own account in the literary club’s magazine, in 1989 he became leader of the protest council of Levice, a branch of the national anti-Communist organization led by Vaclav Havel, who later became Czech president, leader.
But that, Mr. Maruniak said, is not true. He said Jurjaj C. was kept at a distance by activists in the anti-Communist movement, who considered him too extreme and untrustworthy.
“No one really liked him,” Mr. Maruniak said. “He was never part of the team. He is never satisfied with anything. He could never really be a member of any group.”
In his 2015 book, Juraj C. offered what is now considered an account of his own personal evolution. It includes a section on notorious Slovak murderer Jan Harman, who killed eight people in a shooting spree in 2010.
“They declared him crazy, but he wasn’t crazy, he just couldn’t bear the burden anymore.”,” Juraj C. wrote. “He doesn’t need to curse anymore, he doesn’t need to hate anymore. He exhausted himself to an unknown extent.”
Sara Cincurova and Marek Janiga contributed reporting from Bratislava, Slovakia.
