Court Finds Juraj C. Guilty of Terrorism, Sends Him to Prison for 21 Years

Banska Bystrica, 21 October (TASR) - The Specialised Criminal Court (STS) in Banska Bystrica on Tuesday found defendant Juraj C. [name abbreviated due to legal reasons], who shot Premier Robert Fico (Smer-SD) in Handlova (Trencin region) on 15 May of last year, guilty of committing an act of terrorism and sentenced him to 21 years in prison. The court's verdict isn't yet final. The defendant still has the right to appeal if he chooses to do so, while the prosecutor has waived this option. Juraj C., a 72-year-old pensioner, was charged with a terrorist attack against a protected public official and faced life imprisonment. There was no doubt that he had committed the crime, but the legal qualification of his crime was disputable. An alternative to the legal qualification of a terrorist attack was attempted premeditated murder or an attack on a public official. However, the court leaned towards the prosecution's version. It stressed that the defendant didn't attack the premier as a citizen of the Slovak Republic, but explicitly as the premier, whose policies he disagreed with. It stated that he was against the government and incited people to overthrow it. The defendant faced life imprisonment for the terrorist attack. However, the court used extraordinary mitigating provisions, with the lower penalty limit for this crime being 20 years. The senate chairman justified the lower limit by saying that the defendant is an elderly man, has no criminal history and his health isn't good. According to prosecutor Katarina Habcakova and the premier's lawyer David Lindtner, it has been proven beyond any doubt that the defendant committed "the particularly serious crime of a terrorist attack". The defendant's lawyer Namir Alyasry proposed that the court should reclassify the act committed by his client to the criminal offence of attacking a public official, for which the sentence ranges between seven and 12 years. Juraj C. during the trial claimed that he only intended to injure Fico in order to prevent him from continuing in office as premier and didn't intend to kill him. He chose the away-from-home government session in Handlova for that. When the premier approached supporters, Juraj C. drew a legally owned firearm and fired five shots. The trial, held in eight main hearings, began on 8 July. ko/df