The gunman who repeatedly shot the Slovak Prime Minister in 2024, very nearly killing him, has been convicted of terrorism and jailed for 21 years, but despite his confession will appeal against the court’s decision.
The now-convicted terrorist who shot Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico five times at point-blank range in May last year greeted his sentencing by calling on the Slovak people to take to the streets, while also eyeing an appeal against his conviction. The shooting’s victim, Prime Minister Robert Fico, on the other hand reiterated that he forgave the gunman and said it was unfair he was to spent potentially the rest of his life in prison while the political and legacy media actors who radicalised him into even considering an attack walk free.
The Special Criminal Court found 72-year-old pensioner Juraj Cintula guilty of a terrorist shooting against the Prime Minister of Slovakia, sentencing him on Tuesday to 21 years in prison. Normally such a conviction would carry a life sentence, but the court took “exceptional mitigating circumstances” into consideration, including that he was of previously good character, is of advanced years, and is in poor health.
For the prosecution — particularly given the Prime Minister’s comments on forgiveness for the gunman — this unusual reduced sentence invoked no protest. The main point of contention in the trial, given the perpetrator immediately admitted guilt after the shooting and the whole attack was captured on video, was down to whether this was an ‘ordinary’ shooting or an actual act of terrorism.
In Slovak media reportage and opposition rhetoric around the case, a terrorism conviction was seen as particularly unwanted as it would confirm Fico’s claims that he is the focus of a ‘stochastic terrorism; campaign. Indeed, Fico’s lawyer congratulated the court for not bowing to media and political pressure to not recognise the shooting as a terrorist attack after the ruling was made.
Cintula, a former miner and stonemason whose 50-years of poetry writing had seen him involved in left-wing creative and political circles, was intending to appeal the terrorism conviction, his lawyers said.
The prosecutors noted the “spontaneous and authentic” confession made by Cintula to police after he was arrested, and his history of very political Facebook posts to underline that this was not a random attack, but rather a specifically targeted terrorist attack against the Slovak government and constitutional settlement as a whole. In summarising, the judge noted how Cintula had been quick to tell officers about his anger against the government, and particularly how he’d felt motivated to act because of his opposition to Prime Minister Fico’s policy on staying out of the war in Ukraine.
The judge said: “The defendant, immediately after committing the act, spontaneously said that he disagreed with the policy of the current government, the abolition of the Special Prosecutor’s Office , the persecution of cultural and media workers. He wants military aid to be provided to Ukraine , and he considers the current government to be [thought of as a ‘Judas’] by the EU”.
Social media posts by Cintula published before the attack invoked violent opposition to the government, reports Denník Sme. The court heard he had written messages including that Prime Minister Fico and his colleagues “are monsters” and that Fico has “pissed in our faces”. Cintula posted: “I am in favour of taking to the streets, defending ourselves, protesting, disagreeing, even with the use of violence”.
Another post stated: “This is government terror that we must stop. We must stop the government’s swindling of good people at all costs.”
Indeed, after the sentence was handed down and Cintula was able to address the court, he said he felt no remorse, and asked for no mercy. He called on the Slovak people to rise up and take to the streets for anti-government protests on November 17, remembered as the first day of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that ended Soviet rule in then-Czechoslovakia.
Responding to the case, Prime Minister Fico reiterated previous remarks about not blaming the gunman himself, who he has characterised as being easily influenced by the febrile atmosphere created in Slovakia by opposition media and political factions which, he said, makes terror attacks all but inevitable. Breitbart News reported in June 2024 when Fico first spoke out after the shooting, forgave the gunman, and said he blamed the left-wing media complex funded by George Soros and others for violence.
Fico said last year that: “I want to ask the anti-government media, especially those co-owned by the financial structure of [George] Soros not to go down this path and to respect not only the gravity of reasons for the attempted murder, but also the consequences of this attempt”. He criticised that there is only one “correct idea” and that any dissention from the correct opinions should be punished with gunshots, and called on society to take stock and “calm down”, reports the Konzervatívny denník Postoj.
In comments responding to the conviction this week, Fico built on this, saying: “The assassin is essentially a wretch, he is just an instrument of the hatred that the media and opposition politicians built in him”. Fico said it was unfair that gunman Cintula will possibly spend the rest of his life in prison while the people he claims created the atmosphere of hate that pushed him to shoot remain free and will “teach another unfortunate person who will succumb to their hatred” to carry out another attack.
Fico warned: “I don’t know who will be the victim, maybe me, maybe someone else, but there will be a victim”.
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