It has been five months since an assassin shot Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in the town of Handlová with several shots. Slovakia is now grappling with uncertainty surrounding the investigation into the attack. The Slovak secret service has a problem explaining its role in the investigation. Cabinet members, on the other hand, are mulling over who asked her to present a report on the assassination to parliament.
Slovak government representatives have been contradicting each other for several days regarding the alleged report of the assassination of the prime minister. It omits conflicting information about who wanted the Slovak Information Service (SIS) to submit material about the event to the parliament. The document is thus accompanied by an uproar even before its publication. It is not even clear what it should actually contain.
The fact that the secret service and other security forces are involved in the investigation would not in itself be problematic, but there is uncertainty surrounding the role of the Slovak Information Service in the entire investigation. Prime Minister Fico himself started the merry-go-round of conjectures, when he declared at the beginning of October about the assassination investigation that “he doesn’t want to say anything in advance, but that it looks like terrible things,” reminds the Sme daily. The prime minister also repeated his theory that the shooter Juraj Cintula was an activist with “full contacts” to opposition parties. “Even further than the opposition parties, ‘siska’ is working on it,” he described without further details. The court sent Cintula to custody shortly after the crime.
Fico has been hinting since the summer that, in addition to the official investigation, “a report is being created to reveal to the public the alleged circumstances of the assassination”. Later, Minister of the Interior Matúš Šutaj Eštok from the Hlas coalition party intervened in the situation. On Tuesday, he said that Prime Minister Fico ordered the preparation of a report from the director of the secret service Pavol Gašpar. “The SIS director received such an assignment from the recipient of the news, Mr. Prime Minister,” he said. At the same time, however, he claimed that Fico was guaranteed not to have any information from the investigation.
At the same time, the Prime Minister has access to the investigation as a victim. Šutaj Eštok also added that SIS, unlike Fico, “naturally has information”, and if it processes such a report, it is certainly not from the investigative file.
The minister began to interpret his original words differently a few hours later. He said he did not mean the report on the assassination investigation, but that the prime minister requested another report from SIS – on “security risks associated with another possible attempt to assassinate politicians”. Fico denies requesting the report from SIS. According to him, if someone ordered something, it was the opposition MPs on the control committee for SIS. According to the opposition, this is not true.
By law, only the three highest constitutional officials – the prime minister, the president and the chairman of the National Council – can request such information from the director of the SIS. The head of the strongest opposition party, Progressive Slovakia, Michal Šimečka, said that he fears that the prime minister ordered material from the secret service, which he then wants to use against the opposition.
The secret service eventually confirmed the prime minister’s version, saying that Fico never asked it for “intelligence related to the assassination”. According to the SIS, even such information is not provided to him due to a possible conflict of interests. “The Slovak Information Service cooperates with law enforcement authorities in this matter,” explained SIS head Pavol Gašpar, who was nominated to the position by Fico. The SIS did not want to comment on the assassination on the grounds that the law does not allow it, when its work is supposed to be secret.
Gašpar’s father, Tibor Gašpar, is deputy speaker of the parliament for Fico’s direction party. Pavola Gašpar’s entry into office was accompanied by doubts as to whether he would be able to detach himself from ties to the Direction. In addition, he led the service for several months from the position of deputy, because former president Zuzana Čaputová wanted to leave his appointment to her successor, Peter Pellegrini.
In addition to the SIS, the police, its inspection and two prosecutor’s offices are involved in the investigation of the assassination. So it is not clear where the prime minister got the information about the shooter’s contacts with the opposition. Šutaj Eštok also supported the claim in a Facebook status. In it, he writes that “progressives are most afraid of the truth about the assassination in Handlova coming to light”.
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