He wrote darkish, erotic verse and poems that includes torture and ache. He additionally self-published a guide that railed in opposition to Roma individuals 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 guide. “I didn’t shoot anybody. I informed myself — I’ll write a guide.”
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 have to be accountable.
“I used to be 99 p.c positive 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 capturing, 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 referring to 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 incorrect” to determine the person as Juraj C., the identify broadly reported by the Slovakian information media. It’s not clear if the suspect has a lawyer.
Officers say the shooter was a “lone wolf,” an unhinged particular person performing 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 complicated, 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 along 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., a neighborhood identified for his cranky habits and resentful perspective.
“I used to be not shocked 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 on the lookout for 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 components of the feminine anatomy, whereas “The Face” was dominated by descriptions of torture and ache. Each poems had been included in a self-published guide 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 introduced 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 precise his anger.
But there’s 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 for the reason that Nineteen Seventies, once they labored collectively at a coal mine. “Gypsies and Roma,” a guide written and self-published by Juraj C. in 2015, included an brazenly racist poem in regards to the minority: “On the physique of civilization there’s a tumor of criminality rising.”
On different issues, nevertheless, he repeatedly 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 “capacity 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 grew to become steadily stronger as he turned in opposition to Russia, his earlier beacon, notably after the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion in 2022. “He out of the blue grew to become extraordinarily anti-Russian,” mentioned the membership member, who requested that his identify not be revealed as a result of his household feared retribution.
In 2019, Juraj C. stopped attending conferences of the literary membership and appeared surprisingly indifferent when he bumped into individuals 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 over time 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 might 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 determine 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 shops.
Mr. Kollar, who traffics in conspiracy theories, instantly linked the capturing 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 concept of the person’s politics, aside from that “he was in opposition to all the things.”
“He had one thing inside him in opposition to the injustice that he felt had been finished 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 accordance with his personal account within the literary membership’s journal, in 1989 he grew to become the chief of Levice’s protest council, a department of a nationwide anti-Communist group led by Vaclav Havel, who later grew to become the Czech president.
However that, Mr. Maruniak mentioned, just isn’t true. He mentioned Jurjaj C. was saved at arm’s size by activists within the anti-Communist motion, who noticed him as too radical and unreliable.
“No one actually preferred him,” Mr. Maruniak mentioned. “He was by no means a part of the crew. He was by no means content material with something. He may by no means actually be a part of any group.”
In his 2015 guide, Juraj C. gave what now reads like an account of his personal private evolution. It got here in a piece a couple of infamous Slovak assassin, Jan Harman, who killed eight individuals in a capturing 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 must curse anymore, he doesn’t must hate anymore. He’s worn his personal all the way down to that unknown edge.”
Sara Cincurova and Marek Janiga contributed reporting from Bratislava, Slovakia.
