"Lone Wolf" Charged with Shooting Slovakia Prime Minister

A suspect in the shooting of Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, has been charged, the country’s interior minister said on Thursday, describing him as a “lone wolf” who was radicalized after last month’s presidential election.

Mr. Fico’s condition had stabilized after what his government called a politically motivated assassination attempt, but he was “not out of a life-threatening situation,” the deputy prime minister told a news conference. He said Mr. Fico had only a “limited” ability to communicate and faced a “difficult” recovery.

The authorities have not named the suspect, who Slovakian news media outlets described as a 71-year-old amateur poet. But the shooting on Wednesday immediately raised political tempers in the Central European nation, which was already sharply divided between supporters of Mr. Fico (pronounced FEET-soh), who back his right-wing nationalist and anti-immigration policies, and opponents who accuse him of destroying democracy.