STA, 21 February - Police Commissioner Tatjana Bobnar is to file a defamation complaint against Žan Mahnič, a Democrats (SDS) MP and vice chair of the parliamentary Commission for the Oversight of Intelligence and Security Services (KNOVS) after he had accused her of lying about alleged spying on politicians by the police and called on her to resign.
The police said in a press release late on Thursday that Bobnar would lodge a complaint against Mahnič over "misleading and malicious statements and an attack on her honour, good name and integrity".
"It has apparently become a habit of some politicians to try and shape public opinion" by intentionally repeating lies, the police said after Mahnič called on Bobnar to resign.
Mahnič said the fact that the police had launched a preliminary investigation into the spying allegations - Bobnar spoke on Thursday of an investigation against possible spying by individuals outside the police force - was proof that she had been lying to KNOVS members as they had made an inquiry on Tuesday, and should thus resign.
The MP said in a tweet yesterday that the launch of the preliminary investigation in and of itself meant that there is reasonable suspicion that politicians had been spied on.
Bobnar told him and two other KNOVS members, who made an unannounced visit to the police on Tuesday, that the allegations were "fabrications of some web portal and that procedures cannot be launched over every article," said Mahnič in reference to reports about spying allegations published by the SDS-launched weekly Demokracija and the news portal Požareport.
The police responded in the evening, saying that "in line with the principle of legality, police always investigated to see if there is reasonable suspicion for criminal acts of which perpetrators are prosecuted ex officio.
"The police have done this in this concrete case as well, but the launch of a preliminary investigation is far from reasonable suspicion and cannot be launched because of something that has, in Mahnič's words, been known for a long time," the police also said.
