Fedor: Slovakia Averted Terror Threat Last Year; Galko: It Was Hoax
Bratislava, May 18 (TASR) – The Slovak secret services averted terror threats in Slovakia last year, said MP for Most-Hid and former defence minister Martin Fedor after a plenary parliamentary session on Friday devoted to reviewing the activities of the Defence Intelligence and Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS) last year.
“There were indications that Slovakia, like the rest of the world, isn’t immune to threats concerning terrorism. Certain elements that could have supported a terror attack or terrorism on our territory have been prevented from infiltrating. The chiefs of the intelligence services have stated that they effectively managed to avert terror threats,” said Fedor after the session, which was closed to the public.
Another former defence minister and MP for Opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) Lubomir Galko told journalists that the report in fact didn’t concern any real terror threat but an internet hoax regarding an alleged imminent terror attack on Christmas markets in Bratislava.
“I didn’t understand it like Martin Fedor did. I heard a statement about a hoax concerning a terror attack flying around in Slovakia, and it was evaluated in this way. It was rather a funny story,” said Galko.
Meanwhile, Fedor didn’t directly answer a journalist’s question as to whether the intelligence services last year also examined the activities of the Italian Mafia in eastern Slovakia. “The secret services have been effectively mapping the activities of cartels in Slovakia, while the ways in which they attempted to infiltrate the top echelons of the state were also described.
I believe that intelligence sources can be used to prevent such infiltration,” said Fedor.
At the same time Galko said that he learnt at the meeting that SIS was providing information on the Italian Mafia to the appropriate authorities for years. “The secret service claimed that it had been pointing this out, but those who received [the information] are either silent, or claim that they didn’t know about it. I have no reason to mistrust SIS,” added Galko.
Meanwhile, Opposition We Are Family MP Milan Krajniak criticised the secret services’ reports as being almost copy-pasted from last year.
“There wasn’t anything that the public shouldn’t know. For me, there wasn’t anything juicy,” said Krajniak, adding that he asked neither about the Italian Mafia, nor the alleged abduction of a Vietnamese businessman from Berlin via Slovakia to Vietnam by the Asian country’s secret service.
“We’ve had special secret sessions of appropriate parliamentary committees on these issues, and we got enough information there. I don’t have any report so far that the secret services have failed,” said Krajniak. He added that that it seems that Slovakia “didn’t take part in any illegal activity” concerning the Vietnamese’s abduction, which, according to German press reports, could have taken place with the help of a Slovak Government aircraft.
