A “good neighbor”, amateur writer, angry citizen: the pensioner accused of wanting to kill Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fičo has many faces, but none of them seem to really fit his extreme act.

Passing by a row of apartment buildings in Levice, a town in central Slovakia, passers-by take a quick glance towards the seventh floor. The alleged attacker, whose identity has not been released by authorities, has lived in one of the apartments facing the boulevard for 40 years, a neighbor said.

The 71-year-old is accused of shooting the prime minister in cold blood and “he must have gone crazy,” Ludovit Miele said of the “nice, helpful” neighbor he has known since 1983. They last spoke on Monday. “We all have political opinions, but he never expressed them forcefully,” Mile assured, admitting that he disagreed with “certain measures taken by the government” of Fitzo. In any case, they talked “very little about politics” with this retired father of two grown children, he pointed out.

It was indeed a politically motivated assassination attempt, as the police claim? “No, it’s not possible,” insisted the neighbor, describing the quiet life of a man who loved country walks with his wife. He had been out of work as a security guard at a shopping mall in Levice for a few years and was experiencing health problems.

Slovak media have pulled from their archives a video from 2016 in which the suspect was speaking to a TV channel about being attacked by an angry customer while working in a supermarket. The report shows an agile man with a gray beard and many cuts on his face and hands.

Not long after, he wanted to found a political movement “against violence,” as he said in a YouTube video he posted at the time — one of which still exists online. “The world is full of violence and guns. People look like they’ve gone crazy,” he said in the footage released by the Postoj newspaper. “Our goal is to unite people, preserve peace and restore democracy. It is very difficult because no one trusts anyone (…) Migrants are flocking to Europe, hatred and extremism are everywhere. But the worst thing is that the European governments have no alternative to the chaos”, he added.

The movement has a Facebook page, with 191 followers. One of the latest posts, from April 2022, is a video of a demonstration against the war in Ukraine organized in Bratislava by Russians who said they were against Vladimir Putin.

The 71-year-old “wasn’t talking about the war”, however, his neighbor assured. But he didn’t talk about his other passion, literature and poetry either. He was the co-founder, in 2005, of a literary club in Levice, “Duha”, which means “rainbow”. The name was chosen because “each writer has his own style, but together they create beauty,” explained one of the members, who asked to remain anonymous.

The club, which declares itself to be “strictly apolitical”, described the attack against the prime minister as a “tremendous tragedy”.

The alleged perpetrator had written several poems but did not attend any club events from 2019 onwards. None of his work has been published since then, Duha clarified, noting that he has been “tarnished” by the hate mail he receives.

A photo of the 71-year-old, taken in 2016, with members of the far-right pro-Russian organization Slovenskí branci (Slovak Lotteries) also raises questions. He had praised them on Facebook, considering them to be “patriots” who protect citizens. This paramilitary organization ceased its operations two years ago.