The Council, however, could not establish with certainty whether POA had violated the reporter's rights while questioning her. That is why the third institution -- the Office of the National Security Council -- will be asked to conduct an additional inquiry, the committee said.
The National Security Council comprises of the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, ministers of justice, defence, interior, and foreign affairs, a government official in charge of national security, and the armed forces' chief-of-staff, while its office is an operational body.
The chairman of the Council for the Civil Control of Secret Services, Vlatko Cvrtila, said that after an inquiry and an interview with journalist Puljiz, the Council could neither confirm nor refuse, beyond any doubt, the journalist's claims or statements given by POA agents who had interrogated her.
Statements by Puljiz and the POA employees regarding the contents of her interrogation differed to some extent, but they differed completely with regard to the manner in which she had been interrogated.
Cvrtila, who held a news conference with the parliamentary committee's chairman Ivan Jarnjak, said that the contact between POA and the reporter had been established under regular procedure, however, the relevant bodies could not establish whether the reporter's human rights had been violated during the interrogation and whether the agents had blackmailed her.
POA informed the Council that there were no audio recordings of the interrogation and the Council also established that POA had neither monitored Puljiz nor bugged her phones, which the reporter claimed in her letter to the council.
The Council did not establish whether there were valid reasons for POA to interview Puljiz and it is now the duty of the National Security Council to decide on the issue.
It was, however, established that Puljiz had not been told that under the law, she also could refuse to talk with the agents.
The Puljiz case has divided the opposition.
Four Opposition members of the parliamentary committee -- Sime Lucin of the SDP, Ante Markov of the HSS, Pero Kovacevic of the HSP and Srecko Ferencak of the HNS -- voted against the Council's conclusions, and asked that Puljiz as well as the POA agents should take a lie detector test.
Damir Kajin of the IDS opposed the motion while independent MP Mirko Filipovic abstained.
In early November Puljiz asked the Council for the Civil Control of Secret Services to investigate whether POA was working in compliance with the law given that in October it had interrogated her for almost five hours about a former aide of Croatian President Stjepan Mesic and her work as a journalist. The reporter wrote in her letter to Cvrtila that on 5 October this year a POA agent, introducing himself as an employee of the Interior Ministry's organised crime department, phoned her and asked her to have a chat in a cafe. The agent arrived in the cafe, accompanied with another colleague, and both showed her their POA identity papers. According to her letter to Cvrtila, both agents said they would like to talk about Mesic's former aide, Zeljko Bagic, who left the post in the Office of the President as he is believed to have helped runaway general Ante Gotovina, and about her work while she worked for the Jutarnji List daily covering President Mesic's work.
After that they asked her to continue the conversation in the POA main offices, where the talks turned into a five-hour-long interrogation, she wrote in the letter. She also asserted that during the interrogation she was exposed to attempts of blackmailing and that some questions referred to her private life.