Govt Official Used SOA to Survey Civilians

This is not just damage to the government, the damage was done to the development of a democratic Croatia, Sanader said.

Jadranka Cigelj, the head of the Government Office for Associations was suspended today in urgent procedure for surveillance of members of the Civil Society Development Council using the Secret Intelligence Agency (SOA).

Without the government’s knowledge, Cigelj sent to all council members questionnaires with the aim of a security check using the SOA.

PM Sanader and vice-president Kosor apologize

Prime Minister Ivo Sanader at the very beginning of today’s government session said that the government was not aware of the questionnaires, adding that they had moved a proposal for Cigelj’s dismissal. Cigelj has abused her office and , without authorisation and contrary to government policy, requested personal information which she then sent to SOA, the prime minister said.

- This caused damage not only to the government, but for the development of the democratic Croatia, namely to all those standards this government has followed from the very beginning, including the political party I represent - said the prime minister, refuting all suspicions that this could cause any harm to his government.

Vice-president Jadranka Kosor was the first one to discover the incident and informed the prime minister about it. She apologized to all Council members who had to fill in the questionnaires and to all those association members who had been offended by Cigelj’s test procedure.

Representatives of non-governmental associations protest

It all stared this morning while non-governmental associations were protesting in front of the Economy Club where the Days of Associations are being held.

The protest was held because of the questionnaires. The leader of the protest, Gordan Bosanac from the Center for Peace Studies, said that surveillance of the association’s members was unconstitutional and that they demanded of those responsible to find out why this was done.