ZAGREB, 2 Feb 2022 - Members of the Croatian Parliament's Home Affairs and National Security Committee on Wednesday failed to agree on whether the attack committed by Danijel Bezuk on government offices in Zagreb in October 2020 was an act of an individual or if certain social and political groups were behind it. 

"Conclusions have been adopted but there will be dissenting opinions, by me and Mišel Jakšić, because we partly did not agree with the position of the ruling party," Committee chair Siniša Hajdaš Dončić of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) said after the session.

"My impression is that it was an act of an individual," he added when pressed by reporters to state his position.

23-year-old Danijel Bezuk of Kutina opened fire from a machine gun at the government offices in St. Mark's Square on 12 October 2020, wounding a security officer. Prosecutors investigated the case as an act of terrorism and the criminal report was dismissed in July 2021 as shortly after the shooting, the young man committed suicide.

Hajdaš Dončić confirmed that the session discussed right-wing extremism, but also stressed that the case had nothing to do with right-wing political parties.

"I have not seen any political party, not even right-wing political parties active in the parliament, call for an armed rebellion or extremism," he said.

Hajdaš Dončić said that he had called the session of the committee due to the different interpretations by PM Andrej Plenković, the State Attorney's Office, the Ministry of the Interior and the Security-Intelligence Agency (SOA) of the terrorist attack on the government offices.

"I wanted it to be cleared up if the institutions generally enjoy PM Plenković's trust since he earlier expressed partial suspicion regarding certain reports," Hajdaš Dončić said.

He added that the key question was if the attacker had acted on his own, or as a member of a social or political network.

Hajdaš Dončić said that the committee also discussed if there was "something more" than posts on social networks over which some people were arrested.

Committee member Željko Sačić (Croatian Sovereignists) said that he had walked out of the session as the first item on the agenda was discussed; the attack on the government offices, because he disagreed with the conclusion proposed by Hajdaš Dončić.

"I was surprised because the discussion went in a different direction and then Hajdaš Dončić proposed a conclusion under which a crazy terrorist act was to be described as an act of right-wing radicalism," said Sačić.

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Croatian national security is at stake because criminal organizations have infiltrated the MUP identity document issuing system, which stores the personal information of Croatian citizens and residents, according to Željko Cvrtila, a national security expert and former police chief.

"Low wages, lack of internal oversight, political recruiting, and the interference of politics and money within MUP (Croatia Ministry of the Interior) are the main reasons for the appearance of Croatian identity documents on the illegal market," he added during a brief interview to Renata Škudar/Nacional on November 29, 2019.

Is Croatia's national security at stake?

“This is endangering national security, because Croatia’s document issuing system has been infiltrated, and a lot of original identity cards and passports have fallen into the hands of criminal organizations. The system has been penetrated because the intelligence and security networks in our neighboring eastern states are connected to criminal organizations in these countries and with criminal groups in Croatia. All of this is happening on Croatian territory and that is our biggest problem."

How did so many Croatian documents appear on the illegal market?

"The MUP system is intertwined with various political lobbies and people who are not subject to internal oversight. Procedures are not being properly implemented and the people in charge of these systems are not doing their jobs. There is a lack of oversight regarding employee resources and criminal organizations can easily exert their influence in such a permeable system. The system only works when corrupt politicians and the mafia aren't interfering in politics and business, or providing and returning favors. Otherwise, we’ll have chaos where crime reigns,” concluded Cvrtila.

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