The man who tried to assassinate Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico is a government critic and poet who once founded a campaign group against violence, it has emerged.
The suspect was named in local media reports on Wednesday night as Juraj Cintula, a 71-year-old resident of Levice in western Slovakia.
Mr Cintula, who is the author of three poetry collections and two books, is listed as one of the founders of the Dúha literary club, in which he has been active since 2005.
In 2015, he founded the campaign group Against Violence, and had sought to get it officially registered in Slovakia.
“Violence is often a reaction of people, as a form of expression of ordinary dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. Let’s be dissatisfied, but not violent,” a petition circulated by Mr Cintula states.
The movement had called on people to stand against violence of all kinds, from “martial law to domestic physical or psychological violence,” as well as violence on the international stage, in Europe, “in which militarisation, extremism, neo-Nazism, anarchy are growing”.