Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Rodoljub Sabic sees the action of government representatives who constantly repeat the untruth that he at any time and anywhere said that “the police wants to arrest him” as a deliberate attempt to destabilize the Commissioner as an independent institution.
Since the highest state officials (the President, the Minister of Internal Affairs) are involved in spreading this misinformation, the Commissioner once again stresses that it is a complete, rough fabrication.
In this regard, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic said the following:
“Last Saturday (14 October 14) my apartment was visited by a patrol of uniformed people I believed, and even now I believe, they were police officers. They said that the reason for their visit was some kind of illegal construction work in my apartment, which was absolutely false. They stayed briefly, all the time they behaved culturally, decently.
So I commented on their behaviour in the same manner, posting on the twitter: “Police at my door. Fake report for illegal construction. The guys are cultural, impeccable.” And I also added, “But do they send them so zealously to real illegal construction sites ?"
However, in the morning, due to some warnings and the fact that I have been lately exposed to events such as illogical visits of “process servers” and other unknown persons, frequent harassment, even serious threats, I informed the police, the director personally, about the visit.
And I texted him saying the same, a good rating of the behaviour of police officers, visitors. But also the question - Was it surely the police? And a request to check it.
The director contacted me back after a while and said that it was not the police. I asked him to check whether it was the municipal police, or who was, and to report to me. He did not answer me again, I assume, by the order of the Minister of Internal Affairs. But, soon, a campaign started against me, more precisely against the institution of the Commissioner. Firstly, with the claim that I invented the whole event, then it was the municipal police.
What is the truth is that a patrol of uniformed people visited my apartment last Saturday, for a fictitious reason, without any justified reason. The truth is that I did not make any comment on their behaviour, particularly not that they “wanted to arrest me”. And the truth is that the MIA was utterly incorrect about the obligation to inform me as a state official about the alleged “truth” about who really my “visitors” were.
It is a sad reality, but we are already used to this, a state official, if he is not a member of the ruling party (I am not of any), cannot count on state authorities to provide protection him or his family members, even if that would be necessary. But even worse than that, it is unacceptable that senior state officials invent and spread falsehoods on their account, ultimately at the expense of the institutions they represent.”