The case of the alleged possession of child pornography by former Social Democrats (SD) deputy Andrej Magajna started in 2010. The sudden house search that was carried out at the home of the deputy, who allegedly possessed child pornography, was a surprise to some but not to others. Perhaps least of all to Magajna himself. At the time, Magajna objected to some legislative solutions which had been proposed by his government – by Pahor’s government. As he says himself, it was Milan Balažic who first warned him about the possibility of retaliation.
Apparently this did happen since at the time the criminal police suddenly found a notification from more than a year ago by the Luxembourg police claiming that Magajna’s laptop contained child pornography – more precisely a topless girl. Is that pornography or not? I do not know, judge for yourself. What followed was of course the loss of the hard drive of Magajna’s computer by the Slovenian criminal police. But let us leave this aside. A few days ago, a court completely and legally absolved Magajna of any blame. For six years he had been considered to be a kind of paedophile, but now he is absolved of any blame.
I had no impact on the Magajna case
When I was performing the duties of the Minister of the Interior of Slovenia, the criminal police had already concluded their work and the case was being addressed by prosecutors. I therefore could have no formal legal impact on the Magajna case. Of course, this was not something I wished either. However, the case interested me nonetheless. I thought the sequence of events had been exceedingly strange. First Magajna’s revolt against his own government, the warning about retaliation, the house search based on a notification from more than a year ago by foreign police, and last but not least the alleged child pornography – a topless girl; and of course the miraculous loss of the hard drive of Magajna’s computer by the police, and not only the loss of the original hard drive – supposedly the copy was miraculously lost as well.
A few days ago, I also talked about the Magajna case with a high-ranking official from the criminal police. I accused him of abusing the criminal police for political purposes. He responded something like this: “Not at all – the matters in the Magajna case are perfectly clear – but unfortunately we have lost the hard drive of his computer and the case was dropped by the court.” How simple, how unprofessional. Since I know that the official reads my blog almost regularly, or at least that his departments are informing him about my writing, I will inquire further: “According to this logic, the police can carry out a house search at the home of all deputies of the opposition, lose the evidence, and after six years the entire opposition will formally be legally clean, though in fact it will have been compromised for six years. Would this constitute a professional mistake or a political interference of the criminal police into parliamentary democracy.”