The suspect in the attempted assassination of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will appear on Saturday before the Criminal Court, which will decide whether to keep him in pretrial detention or not.
An Agence France-Presse video journalist present in the court saw several police cars arriving at the courthouse, while masked police officers were guarding the entrance.
Slovak channel TA3 confirmed that the suspect had arrived in court.
The man, identified in Slovak media as 71-year-old poet Juraj Sintola, fired five shots at Fiko on Wednesday, hitting him four times.
The shooting occurred as Fico was greeting supporters after a government meeting in the central Slovak town of Handlova.
A helicopter transported him to the hospital and he underwent surgery that lasted five hours.
Fico, who has been in office since his centrist populist SMER party won general elections last fall, underwent another two-hour operation on Friday.
Miriam Labonnikova, director of Roosevelt Hospital in the city of Banska Bystrica in central Slovakia, said on Friday, “The patient is now fully conscious and in stable condition, but he is still in intensive care. His condition is serious.”
Slovak Interior Minister Matos Matusz Sutai said in television statements, “If the bullet had been a few centimeters higher, it would have hit the prime minister’s liver.”
A prosecutor requested Friday that Centola be placed in pretrial detention after being charged with murder. He appears on Saturday before the Criminal Court in Pezinok, northeast of Bratislava.
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