A member of the so-called Sýkora gang Jurij Fejer is set to spend 20 years in jail for his involvement in four murders following a plea bargain that he cut with a prosecutor in charge and that was approved by the Specialised Criminal Court in Pezinok near Bratislava on October 14.
The ruling is final and cannot be appealed. Fejer, 41, is to serve his sentence for taking part in the murders of Roman Deák, Eduard and Robert Diničs and the latter’s bodyguard in the late 1990s.
“I didn’t join the group of my own volition,” Fejer, who also goes by the moniker “Little Russian”, told the court. “I had no power to make decisions whether or not I’d be involved in those acts. I received orders and had to go. I could have said no, but I knew full well what I’d be in for, they would’ve killed and buried me. I’m sorry.”
Fejer confessed to having been involved in all four murders and to having been a gang member since 1999. Aside from the sentence which he is set to serve in a maximum security prison Fejer also forfeited several mobile phones, two guns and €27,000, the TASR newswire wrote.
Eduard Dinič was murdered near the tennis courts in Bratislava’s Zlaté Piesky on May 9, 1998, after an explosive hidden under tiles was set off remotely. His brother Robert was riddled with bullets five months later in the city’s borough of Dlhé Diely, with his bodyguard killed at the same time. Deák was murdered in the borough of Dúbravka in October 1999 after sustaining 19 bullet wounds, some from assault rifles, while he was about to get into his Mercedes. The Sýkora mob is named after its erstwhile boss, Miroslav Sýkora, who was shot dead on a parking lot outside the Holiday Inn hotel in Bratislava in 1997 aged 33.
Earlier this month, police apprehended František Borbely who is touted as one of the last three living ringleaders of the Sýkora gang. Borbely was among four successors to take over the reins of the gang after Sýkora was shot dead. Besides him, other ringleaders were Robert L., who has been charged with ten murders but remains at large, Peter Čongrády, who was murdered in 2004, and Ladislav Bališ, who was sentenced to 25 years in jail earlier this year for planning a murder.
(Source: TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
