THE INTERIOR Ministry has gathered information on the whereabouts of President Ivan Gašparovič’s bodyguards during a hunt in the Lešť military area in August 2009, when woodsman Michal Bobák was accidentally shot dead, Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák told journalists on January 23, as reported by the TASR newswire.
On August 2, 2009, the day his friend Bobák tragically died on a hunting trip, President Gašparovič was at his home in Limbach, Bratislava Region, according to the report that the President’s Office received from the Office for the Protection of Public Officials, and which it subsequently published.
Gašparovič came home from a trip to Croatia on July 31 at 21:40 and left on August 2 at 19:05 for Tehelné Pole football stadium in Bratislava, TASR reported.
The Interior Ministry reconstructed the president’s itinerary based on records kept by the police officers who provide his transport and security as well as the operational history of their vehicles. The report confirms an earlier claim by the President’s Office that Gašparovič returned to Slovakia from his vacation in Croatia late on July 31, 2009, according to TASR.
The case was recently brought to light by blogger Juraj Poláček, who suggested in an online posting that although another hunter, Štefan Drozd, had confessed to the police that he shot Bobák, Gašparovič may also have been present at the time of the incident. The president subsequently filed a criminal complaint for libel against an unknown offender.
