Former MP František Gaulieder, 66, whose whereabouts had been unknown by his family for some time, was killed by a train near the village of Trnovec nad Váhom in west Slovakia, in the small hours of Saturday, commercial JOJ TV's news website reported on the same day.
During the night, the police first found Gaulieder's car containing his identification documents parked between Trnovec nad Váhom and the district town of Šaľa. Later on, at around 1.50 a.m., a train passing through the area struck and killed a man later identified as Gaulieder.
Elected on a joint slate of Vladimir Meciar's HZDS and Slovakia's Farmers Party in 1994, Gaulieder eventually became a critic of Mečiar's premiership in 1996 and decided to leave the party in order to continue in Parliament as an independent MP.
"I see no reason to remain in this Movement because I don't want to be part of failing to carry through its election program," said František Gaulieder back in 1997.
Nevertheless, he was stripped of his mandate within a few weeks by the Mečiar-dominated House in a move that was later described by the European Court of Human Rights as a violation of his rights. The state subsequently paid him €30,000 as indemnity.
"For us it is important for Parliament to respect the findings of the Constitutional court," said the former MP for public TV. This, however, never happened. Frantisek Gaulieder continued to criticise the situation in Slovakia even after the explosions of a bomb in front of his house. He became an activist and had been a city councillor in the western Slovak town of Galanta since 2014. Shortly before his death, he complained to MP Igor Matovič about being sent envelopes with bullets. While the first news bulletin talked about alleged suicide, the spokesperson of the Nitra region Police corps Božena Bruchterová confirmed on Monday that the police has started criminal proceedings for the crimes of murder and restricting personal freedom in the case of the death of the former MP František Gaulieder.
