The assailant who critically injured Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico in an attack on Wednesday may not be a lone offender after all, a government official said on Sunday.
There are indications that the gunman may have not acted alone, Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok told journalists in Bratislava.
"We have put together a team of investigators who will also work with the version that it was not a lone wolf," the minister said.
One of the indications is that content on the perpetrator's Facebook page was deleted at the time when he was in the hands of the police. He himself did not have access to the page at that time.
Fico is out of danger following the attempt on his life on Wednesday, Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kaliňák told the news agency TASR earlier Sunday.
A gunman attempted to kill him in what Slovakian officials have said was a politically motivated crime.
The prime minister is currently recovering in the university hospital in Banská Bystrica, close to the small town of Handlová where he was shot.
Šutaj Eštok issued a warning to "all the trolls" on the internet who condoned the assassination attempt on the 59-year-old prime minister or spread other hate messages and calls for violence.
The police would take ruthless action against all such agitators, find them and ensure that they are punished, Šutaj Eštok asserted.
Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that a round table of parliamentary parties planned by President Zuzana Čaputová and her elected successor Peter Pellegrini planned for Tuesday will materialize.
The round table was intended to reduce political tensions between the governing and opposition parties and help to reduce the polarization of society.
In a video message to the public, Pellegrini said that apparently "the time is not yet ripe for this." Some politicians had "shown that they are not capable of self-reflection even after such a tragedy."
Pellegrini was referring to "unsavoury attacks" by politicians on rivals - these had contributed significantly to the tensions in society.
Pellegrini, a Social Democrat, won the presidential election at the beginning of April and will succeed the outgoing liberal president Čaputová in June. The Slovak Republic gained independence in 1993 with the division of Czechoslovakia.
Pellegrini has condemned the attack on the prime minister as an "unprecedented threat to Slovak democracy."
"If we express political opinions with guns in the public squares, and not in the polling stations, we are jeopardizing everything we have built together in the 31 years of Slovak independence," he wared after the attack on Wednesday.
Political divisions in Slovakia can be traced as far back as 2018 when a journalist investigating high-level corruption claims was murdered.
The journalist, Jan Kuciak, was killed execution-style at his home in Veľká Mača.
Anger at his murder - and at the government's reaction to it - prompted widespread protests, leading Fico - who was prime minister at the time - to resign along with then-interior minister Robert Kaliňák.
