Slovakia reclassifies PM shooting as terror attack

Bratislava: Slovak authorities have reclassified the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico and are investigating it as a terror attack, not as attempted murder, a spokeswoman said on Thursday.

Fico is recovering from serious injuries he suffered when a gunman shot him four times from close range after an off-site government meeting in central Slovakia on May 15.

The gunman, identified by Slovak media as 71-year-old poet Juraj Cintula, was charged with premeditated attempted murder and remanded in custody.


"It has been reclassified," Zuzana Drobova, a spokeswoman for the general prosecutor's office, told AFP.

"We let the suspect know today that it is now classified as a particularly serious crime of terror attack," she added without giving further details.

The 59-year-old Fico leads a three-party governing coalition of his centrist populist Smer-SD party, the centrist Hlas and the far-right SNS.

He underwent two lengthy surgeries in a hospital in the central Slovak city of Banska Bystrica and was transferred for home treatment to the capital Bratislava on May 31.