The Prosecutor’s Office emphasized that support for a terrorist crime is also a crime, punishable with three to ten years in prison. Photo credit: FiF UK via facebook.
Bratislava, Oct 18 (CTK) – The murder on Wednesday of two men outside a bar visited by LGBT+ people in Bratislava is now being investigated as a terrorist act, Slovak media reported yesterday, citing the Special Prosecutor’s Office spokeswoman Jana Tokolyova.
She said the evidence gathered so far indicates that the murder can be qualified as a terrorist act.
The probable attacker committed suicide, the police said.
“The available evidence obviously shows that the act bears all the signs of the crime of terrorism, as defined by law,” said Tokolyova.
The police were originally investigating the murder as a hate crime.
In connection with the new categorisation of the attack, the Prosecutor’s Office emphasized that support for a terrorist crime is also a crime, punishable with three to ten years in prison.
Law enforcement agencies will approach such cases resolutely in criminal proceedings, Tokolyova said.
On Wednesday evening, a 19-year-old man shot dead two men, aged 23 and 26, and seriously wounded a 28-year-old woman outside the Teplaren bar in Bratislava, which is visited by people from the LGBT+ community. The perpetrator fled the scene of the crime, and was found dead on Thursday by police, who said he had committed suicide.
The hospital where the injured woman is being treated said yesterday that her condition is stable and gradually improving.
Before the attack, the perpetrator posted a manifesto against Jewish and LGBT+ people on social networks.
The double murder has been condemned by leading Slovak politicians including President Zuzana Caputova and Prime Minister Eduard Heger.
Slovak police said that disinformation was spreading on social networks with false accounts of the motivations behind the murder. They said the authors of such posts are taking advantage of the fact that the police cannot comment on such disinformation at this stage of the investigation. The Slovak daily Dennik N reported that the most common false information is that the murder was committed out of jealousy.
The Novy cas server reported yesterday that the perpetrator waited in front of PM Heger’s house for several hours on the day he carried out the shooting at Teplaren. The police have not provided any information on what he did before the attack.
