Former Interior Minister Tomislav Karamarko said on Friday the police, its then director Oliver Grbic and his deputy Milijan Brkic acted under the Police Law in last year's Operation Judas, at the request of the State Prosecutor's Office, and that the targets of surveillance were not State Attorney Mladen Bajic and journalists but someone in the system who leaked information on investigations.
Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said earlier today that an Internal Affairs investigation revealed that Bajic was not under police surveillance but that his contacts with four journalists and the editor in chief of Jutarnji List daily, Mladen Plese, who was under surveillance, were indirectly monitored in 2011.
Ostojic said the order for the police operation codenamed Judas, which was launched over leaks from an investigation into the Fimi Media corruption case, had come from Grbic and that it was coordinated by Brkic, the current secretary-general of the strongest opposition party, the HDZ.
Karamarko, who is the HDZ leader, told the press that Bajic had not been the target of police surveillance but "those who gave journalists information from investigations without authorisation."
He recalled that in July 2011, the anti-corruption office USKOK asked the police to investigate leaks from an investigation of former HDZ accountant Branka Pavosevic, one of the accused in the Fimi Media case. He said the police acted under the Police Act at the request of the State Prosecutor's Office and wondered how could police obtain information without obtaining the phone records of those involved.
"Journalists weren't the target. The target was the hole in the system and those who leaked official or state secrets. Not journalists, you were only doing your job," he said.
Asked if documents had been suppressed or destroyed, Karamarko said such claims were attempts to discredit the incumbent HDZ leadership. "It's not good to politicise some jobs the state had to do."
Earlier today, Ostojic said Operation Judas confirmed the need to amend the Police Act and better define civilian monitoring of police work and the obtaining of phone records. He said nobody had immunity from having their phone records obtained but that requests for that should be well-founded.
He said police obtained 42,000 phone records last year, which was only 0.43 per cent of the more than nine million phone numbers in the country. As many as 61 per cent of those records referred to disposable mobile phones often used by criminals.
The State Prosecutor's Office would not comment on the Internal Affairs findings.
