A Polish man who opened fire in Krakow city’s main square and killed six people on Saturday visited websites about Norwegian white-supremacist killer Anders Behring Breivik, according to Poland’s justice minister.
Investigation Findings and Suspect Details
Waldemar Zurek stated on Tuesday that there was a very strong indication of right-wing extremism behind the gunman’s actions that shook the nation on November 7. Investigators also found in his possessions a Gadsden flag, a US Civil War-era flag featuring a rattlesnake on a yellow background that is often linked to the US far right, the minister added.
Prosecutors named the suspect as 24-year-old factory worker Michal Oksinski. He died in hospital on Monday after being shot and arrested by police minutes after they said he opened fire from his car in Krakow’s historic main square, a popular tourist destination.
Zurek explained that a silencer, a muzzle device used to reduce the noise of a gun, was found in the car used by the killer. The bodies of Oksinski’s father, mother and sister were found in their family home on Saturday. Officials stated they were also likely killed by Oksinski.
In July 2011, anti-Muslim neo-Nazi Breivik killed eight people with a car bomb in Oslo and then shot and killed 69 others, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp on Utoeya island.
Political Dispute Over Motives
The suspect’s motives have been the subject of a bitter political dispute since Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski said on Saturday, just hours after the incident, that he had been influenced by far-right ideology. Nationalist opposition Law and Justice party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski called Kierwinski’s statement a blatant lie and members of the government appeared to backtrack on Monday.
Right-wing lawmaker Michal Wojcik told the Reuters news agency that he was outraged by Justice Minister Zurek’s comments. He stated that in his view, representatives of the Polish government are acting dishonestly toward the international community.
Kierwinski told public radio on Tuesday that he was not taking back anything he had said but that he was waiting to see investigators’ findings.
