Slovak PM not in immediate danger; suspect detained

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is no longer in immediate danger but still in a serious condition, his deputy said on Sunday as a court put the suspected gunman in pretrial detention.

"We are all a little calmer," Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak told a news conference outside the hospital where Fico is being treated in the central town of Banska Bystrica.

The prime minister, 59, was hit by four bullets on Wednesday in an attack that raised alarm in the central European country of 5.4 million people.

Kalinak told journalists that Fico's condition was still too serious to consider transferring him to hospital in the capital. But the worst fears had passed for now.

The suspected gunman, named by Slovak media as 71-year-old poet Juraj Cintula, was placed in pretrial detention by a special penal court in Pezinok northeast of the capital Bratislava on Saturday.

"The reason … is concerns about a potential escape or that the criminal activity may continue," court spokeswoman Katarina Kudjakova told Agence France-Presse.

The decision followed a request from a prosecutor made on Friday. Cintula had been charged with a premeditated murder attempt earlier.

Fico was shot as he was walking to greet supporters after a government meeting in the central mining town of Handlova.

Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said earlier that if one of the shots "went just a few centimeters higher, it would have hit the prime minister's liver".

Fico took office in October after his Smer party won a general election.

He is serving his fourth term as prime minister after campaigning on proposals for peace between Russia and Slovakia's neighbor Ukraine, and for halting military aid to Kyiv, which his government later did.

Fico leads a coalition comprising his Smer party, the HLAS and the SNS party.

Kalinak said the government would carry on without Fico "according to the program he has outlined".

Outgoing President Zuzana Caputova and her successor Peter Pellegrini, a Fico ally who will take office in June, have called on fellow Slovaks to refrain from "confrontation" after the shooting.

They called a meeting of all parliamentary party leaders for Tuesday to show unity in the aftermath of the attack.

Police have meanwhile charged several people who had approved of the attack on Fico on social media.

Agencies Via Xinhua