Almost a year after the kidnapping of the president’s son Michal Kováč Jr. in August 1995, policeman Róbert Remiáš was murdered. An improvised explosive device detonated in his car. Remiáš was a friend and liaison of Oskar Fegyveres, a former member of the Slovak Information Service (SIS) and a key witness in the case of the kidnapping of the president’s son.
- They kidnapped Michal Kováč Jr. on August 31, 1995 and took him to Austria.
- According to testimony, the Slovak Information Service participated in the kidnapping of the president’s son.
- Róbert Remiáš died on April 29, 1996 in a car explosion in Bratislava.
- In 1998, Mikuláš Dzurinda, as acting president, granted controversial amnesties.
- On April 5, 2017, members of parliament canceled Mečiar’s amnesty and reopened the case.
On Wednesday, April 29, 30 years will pass since Remiáš’s death, of which the SIS was suspected from the beginning. The case is still not sufficiently clarified. Michal Kováč Jr. kidnapped on August 31, 1995. A group of men ambushed him on the road between Svätý Jura and Bratislava and dragged him in the trunk of a car to Hainburg in Austria, where they alerted the police to his presence. On Kováč Jr. an international arrest warrant was issued at that time for the Technopol case.
After the testimony of Fegyveres, a direct participant in the kidnapping, it was confirmed that SIS, which was headed by Ivan Lexa at the time, was involved in bringing the president’s son abroad. The motive for the kidnapping was an attempt to discredit President Michal Kováč, who at that time was in a political conflict with Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar (HZDS).
Fegyveres first informed the president about his participation in the kidnapping. Then on September 24, 1995, he also testified before the police investigator Peter Vačok. After the interrogation, his friend took him to Hungary because Fegyveres feared for his life. Until his death, Remiáš worked as a link between Fegyveres and Slovakia.
His car exploded on April 29, 1996 at 10:15 p.m. on the way to Bratislava’s Karlová Ves at the intersection of Karloveská and Botanická streets. After the explosion, the car caught fire and Remiáš died in the flames. He drove a BMW that had been modified to run on propane-butane. The first police reports also reported that this drive was the cause of the explosion.
The police, together with the political leadership of Slovakia at the time, tried to convince the public that the car exploded by accident and that it was not a case of murder. She also provided similar information to the public at a time when there was already an opinion of the Institute of Criminalistics and Expertise that it was an improvised explosive device.
It was not until September 5, 1996 that the police investigator reported that the explosion was caused by a booby-trapped explosive system. However, the case was not investigated, and Prime Minister Mečiar, as acting president, granted amnesties on March 3, 1998, which related to the case of the introduction of Kováč Jr. abroad and the murder of Remiáš. After the end of Mečiar’s era, the police started to investigate the deeds again.
In 1999, the investigator accused Jozef Roháč and Imrich Oláh of the murder of Remiáš. Since December 2002, former SIS director Ivan Lexa has also been prosecuted for allegedly instructing Remiáš’s murder. Former Bratislava underworld boss Miroslav Sýkora was also supposed to have participated in the murder, from whom, according to Lex’s accusation, he ordered the murder. Sýkora was murdered on February 6, 1997 at the Holiday Inn hotel in Bratislava.
However, in September 2006, the Bratislava regional prosecutor’s office stopped the prosecution of Oláh and Roháč. The criminal prosecution in relation to Lex was also stopped. On October 19, 2006, Mečiar declared in the plenary session of the National Council (NR) of the Slovak Republic that the act did not happen and that there was no ordering of the murder.
Ten years later, the police investigator issued a resolution deciding to continue the suspended criminal prosecution in the case of Remiáš’s death. The prosecutor of the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Bratislava instructed to issue the decision. They qualified the act as a crime of murder. On April 5, 2017, members of parliament also canceled Mečiar’s amnesty from 1998. At the place where Remiáš died, there is a six-meter cross, which was placed there in 1996 by the artists Fero Guldan and Ján Kodoň.
