During Question Time on Wednesday, Daniel Spajic of the right-wing DP party asked Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic about a €400 million allocation for refugees and migrants and where 55,000 irregular migrants, who were granted a seven-day stay in Croatia, had disappeared in the last 10 months.

Concerning the issue of migrations, Plenkovic noted that his cabinet had recently adopted a report on a state of affairs in irregular migrations in 2023 so as to be proactive in addressing this issue and that it would be on the parliament’s agenda on Thursday.

However, the debate between the premier and DP deputies tackled also the 12 October 2020 attack on Government House when 23-year-old Danijel Bezuk opened fire from a machine gun at the government offices in St. Mark’s Square wounding a security officer. Prosecutors investigated the case as an act of terrorism and the criminal report was dismissed in July 2021 because shortly after the shooting the young man committed suicide.

DP MPs accused the premier of calling Damir Markus, an official of this opposition party, a terrorist, and continued to hold a grudge against Plenkovic and the HDZ party for cooperating with the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS).

Mlinaric said that it was Plenkovic who made coalitions with terrorists, alluding to the SDSS and wartime Croatian Serb rebel leaders Vojislav Stanimirovic and Goran Hadzic.

Plenkovic replied that Markus, a member of the DP presidency, attended the last hearing in the trial against Djuro Cehulic to support him. Recently, a court in Sisak  sentenced 66-year-old Cehulic to a conditional sentence of one year in prison for threatening Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and for illegal possession of weapons.

Plenkovic said that it was Cehulic who indoctrinated Bezuk with anti-government sentiment.

“In 2020, you as a political a party supported and showed understanding for the terrorist act,” Plenkovic replied.

This prompted Mlinaric to accuse the HDZ for failing to prosecute terrorists who killed 12 policemen in Borovo Selo and underscored that over 33 years nobody has been held to account for this crime.

In order to put an end on this heated debate, Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandrokovic imposed a 10-minute recess.