STA, 25 January - Rajko Kozmelj, director of Slovenia's intelligence and security agency SOVA (Slovenska obveščevalno-varnostna agencija), will insist the agency be given new powers to fight against violent extremism. He also said in an interview run by the newspaper Delo on Saturday he believed the political oversight of SOVA was being abused.
The draft resolution on the national security strategy envisaged new powers to facilitate early detection of violent extremism, such as the Štajerska Varda.
This would allow SOVA to secretly enter the homes of Slovenian citizens without ties to foreigners to gather data, which many found problematic.
The parliamentary Defence Committee consequently voted against these provisions before the resolution was passed in parliament without them last September.
Kozmelj believes the public and some politicians will probably find it hard to understand SOVA's arguments for more powers "until we are faced with a concrete threat".
He said SOVA would like "a specific new power to uncover and prevent on time all security risks for which no law enforcement body in Slovenia has powers now".
Kozmelj gave the Štajerska Guard para-military group as an example, saying the country's security system had no means to detect this security threat.
It was too early for the police to start an investigation, whereas SOVA could not act "because there was no foreign element involved", he explained.
Another of SOVA's challenges is staff. Kozmelj said SOVA would continue to hire through public calls and in other ways, but "the problem is how to attract adequate staff who would be willing to work for such a low pay".
Kozmelj also believes political oversight, carried out by a parliamentary commission, is being abused, but he is in favour of "expert and independent oversight".
He argued that measures based on ICT could only be overseen by "those who know what they have in front of them". "Of course, this does not mean I exclude political oversight."
As for the scandal surrounding the hiring of Prime Minister Marjan Šarec's acquaintance, he said this chapter was over for SOVA, yet it continued to be politicised.
Kozmelj is also bothered that SOVA staff are allowed to be members of political parties, so in the planned changes to the SOVA law, this is to be severely limited.
Asked which minister is most active user of SOVA's intelligence, Kozmelj said apart from the prime minister, it was Economy Minister Zdravko Počivalšek and Education Minister Jernej Pikalo.
"When I came to SOVA, I noticed the cooperation with the ministries was not the way I'd want it to be. Now we have joint meetings to properly discuss things."
