Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Annex
The Case of Hedviga Malinová issue any arrest warrants. It did not turn out until later that the police apprehended and interrogated two young extremists whose appearance perfectly matched the identikits the next day after the assault but released both suspects because they reportedly had “bulletproof alibi”. Immediately after the attack, the case investigators questioned Malinová’s university' teachers but not her classmates who also saw her immediately after the incident. Later, some of the teachers recollected that the investigators were much more interested in why they had informed the media and why they had taken her pictures rather than in Malinová’s health condition. They did not ask the teacher who had travelled with Malinová from Dunajská Streda to Nitra on the morning before the incident about her condition that morning, whether she was nervous before the examination or what were her study results. Meanwhile, the case provoked first exchanges of heavy verbal artillery among politicians. Parliament passed a resolution condemning displays of extremism and intolerance by the votes of all assembly members except SDKU deputies; on August 30, civic activists organized a protest march against extremism in Nitra.3 Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány called on his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico to dissociate himself from anti-Hungarian statements and punish perpetrators of the assault on Hedviga Malinová. Fico’s reply was that Slovakia did not need Hungary’s patronizing on the importance of combating extremism. The increasingly frequent anti-Hungarian incidents that took place on Slovakia’s entire territory in summer 2006 were particularly unpleasant for the recently inaugurated Fico administration because at this point it was pulling all the stops trying to stave off strong international criticism for including the nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS) into the ruling coalition; the dominant ruling party of Premier Fico (SMER-SD) was even threatened to be expulsed from the Party of European Socialists (PES). From this viewpoint, the assault on Malinová took place at the worst possible time, provided its timing had not been intentional. SiX-'l-IOUR iNTERROqATiON In the afternoon hours of August 25, 2006, the police in Nitra launched criminal investigation of unknown perpetrators of the assault on Hedviga Malinová; however, their investigation was marked by conspicuous reluctance: the investigators did not inspect the crime scene until four hours after the incident; they did not properly search the surroundings of the crime scene; they did not secure the location of found objects; they did not draw 301
