In an interview with our media outlet, the former director of SOVA and president of the defence committee at the SDS expert council, Janez Stušek, sharply criticised the press conference at which Nika Kovač, Filip Dobranić, Borut Mekina and the Israeli Achyia Schatz presented alleged evidence that Israeli intelligence services had recorded Slovenian citizens and supposedly obtained the data from SOVA.
Janez Stušek not only doubts the credibility of the presented evidence, but assesses the entire action as a pre-election political tool that requires an immediate investigation by law-enforcement bodies – also because of the possible abuse of domestic institutions.
When asked about the convincingness of the evidence and a possible source inside SOVA, Stušek replied without hesitation: “I am convinced that this data and everything they presented is, to my taste, totally unconvincing. I am convinced that they did not obtain this from SOVA – if SOVA had been doing anything in an official capacity, it would have forwarded this information much earlier. If, however, they received it ‘between the lines’ or ‘off the record’, that constitutes an abuse of official position with the aim of influencing the elections. In either scenario – whether SOVA was involved or not – this story makes no sense at all.”
SOVA would have acted immediately
Stušek emphasised that the official SOVA, if it had suspicions of foreign services influencing elections, would have had to act through official channels and would not have waited months for the material to appear at a press conference – let alone handed the data over to NGOs: “If we had had information about meetings with Israeli services aimed at influencing the streets or elections, this would long ago have become part of official prosecution. Clearly that did not happen.”
In his opinion, this is a classic political tool just before the elections. He also points to double standards, specifically regarding the 8 March Institute under Nika Kovač’s leadership, which is likewise financed by a foreign actor. “Absolutely. This is a big show for the public that is not based on convincing evidence. It’s the same as someone on television saying they are financed from abroad – that is also foreign influence. This is absurd […] Instead of dealing with the substance and what we are going to do about it, we are talking about the staging and who commissioned it.”
According to him, 90 percent of the energy should be devoted to what actually happened and how to sanction it, rather than 10-percent speculation about Israeli services and SOVA. “These actors are trying to confuse the electorate,” he said.
On the content of the recordings and the corrupt aspect
Stušek assessed the content of the recordings that have become public in recent days as “eloquent enough in itself”: “The content itself is sufficiently eloquent; it is difficult to comment on it further. In recent weeks we have not heard any (reasonable) alternative explanation. The people appearing in the recordings should definitely be questioned by law-enforcement bodies, regardless of which scenario we are dealing with. Whether someone was simply boasting that they had access to the ‘right people’ and actually did not, which would be fraud, or whether it was an actual attempt at inducement or abuse of official position – in both cases it is a bad scenario that will have to be explained,” he believes.
A.H.
