Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico “escaped death by just a hair” after being shot several times, the country’s future president said after the alleged gunman was charged with attempted murder.
The shooting was the first major assassination attempt on a European political leader for more than 20 years, and has drawn international condemnation. Political analysts and politicians say it has exposed an increasingly febrile and polarised political climate in Slovakia and across Europe.
A 71-year-old suspect, named locally as Juraj Cintula, was arrested at the scene and has been charged with premeditated attempted murder.
Peter Pellegrini, the president-elect who is due to take office next month, said that if “the gunshot wounds were in a different place by a few centimetres, today we might have
