He wrote darkish, erotic verse and poems that includes torture and ache. He additionally self-published a e-book that railed in opposition to 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 instructed 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 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 many years, 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 unsuitable” to determine the person as Juraj C., the identify extensively 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 performing just for himself — an account of the crime that matches the profile sketched by individuals who knew Juraj C.
On Friday, nonetheless, law enforcement officials visited the house block the place he lived and took video footage from safety cameras. Ondrej Szabo, the supervisor for the advanced, mentioned that investigators wished to see if anyone had visited the person’s house within the days main as much as the assault. Mr. Szabo mentioned the person by no means struck him as harmful and infrequently went for walks hand in hand together with his spouse. The couple have two kids.
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 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, adverse 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 adverse,” 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 have been included in a self-published e-book that was seen by The New York Instances.
Politicians on each side of a deep political divide in Slovakia that’s break 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 precise his anger.
But there’s one trigger, in response to 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 Seventies, once they labored collectively at a coal mine. “Gypsies and Roma,” a e-book written and self-published by Juraj C. in 2015, included an brazenly racist poem concerning the minority: “On the physique of civilization there’s a tumor of criminality rising.”
On different issues, nonetheless, he frequently switched sides.
In 2016, for instance, Juraj C. provided public assist for Slovenski Branci, or Slovak Conscripts, a paramilitary group identified for supporting Russia. In an announcement of assist, he mentioned he admired the group’s “potential to behave with out approval from the state.”
Two years later, nonetheless, 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 20 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 in opposition to Russia, his earlier beacon, notably after the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion in 2022. “He immediately 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 is named Rainbow has fueled claims that he’s an L.G.B.T.Q. activist, a task that will 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 individual to determine a suspect was Danny Kollar, a Slovak who lives in London, from the place he runs one among Slovakia’s most generally adopted and vituperative social media retailers.
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 the whole lot.”
“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 quick 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.
Based on 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, will not be 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 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 e-book, Juraj C. gave what now reads like an account of his personal private evolution. It got here in a piece a few infamous Slovak assassin, Jan Harman, who killed eight folks 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 right down to that unknown edge.”
Sara Cincurova and Marek Janiga contributed reporting from Bratislava, Slovakia.
