WARSAW, Nov 10 (Reuters) – The dead gunman who killed six people in a Krakow square visited websites about Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, Poland’s justice minister said on Tuesday, adding there were signs he may have been influenced by right-wing extremism.
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 (PiS) party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski called Kierwinski’s statement a “blatant lie” and members of government appeared to backtrack on Monday.
However, Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek told Radio Krakow on Tuesday that there was “a very strong indication of right-wing extremism” being behind the actions of the suspect, who prosecutors named as 24-year-old factory worker Michal Oksinski.
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Oksinski died in hospital on Monday after being shot and arrested by police minutes after they said he opened fire from a car in Krakow’s historic main square, a popular tourist destination.
“It is clear that he visited websites concerning Anders Breivik,” Zurek said.
In July 2011, anti-Muslim neo-Nazi Breivik killed eight people with a car bomb in Oslo and then gunned down 69, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp on Utoeya island.
Zurek added that a yellow flag featuring a snake and the words “Don’t tread on me,” known as the Gadsden flag, found in Oksinski’s room had been used by far-right groups in the United States.
He also said that symbols found in Oksinski’s workplace “may point toward this line of inquiry”.
PiS lawmaker Michal Wojcik told Reuters that he was “outraged” by Zurek’s comments. “In my view, representatives of the Polish government are acting dishonestly toward the international community,” he said.
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.
Zurek said that a silencer had been found in the car used by the gunman.
The bodies of Oksinski’s father, mother and sister were found in their family home on Saturday. Officials say they were also likely killed by Oksinski.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Anna Koper; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
