Hanzek said last Tuesday that the activities of the Strojans, a Roma family in the centre of weeks-long controversy, were monitored in detail by the police. The police also monitored the arrivals and departures of visitors and journalists, he claimed.

The Office of the State Prosecution General said on Friday that there was no indication that the police had carried out illegal covert surveillance. The office explained that the law tasked the police with protecting people and property and maintaining public order.

Responding to the statement, Hanzek wondered in Ljubljana on Monday whether waking up the family in the middle of the night and counting them, reporting about their everyday activities, stopping and preventing them from leaving the centre, taking visitors' personal data and monitoring journalists really constituted regular police activities.

According to Hanzek, the state prosecution said that the police did not need a decree issued by a court or prosecution to carry out the surveillance and based its activities on its internal regulations.

However, the prosecution is forgetting about the Constitution, according to which human rights can only be limited by law, Hanzek said. The police can only use the powers given to them by law and not by their internal rules, he added.

Hanzek also said that in case the court or prosecution had issued a decree to carry out the surveillance he would not doubt its lawfulness, however, he would probably still be uncertain whether such a large-scale operation was necessary.

Police director general Joze Romsek said on Thursday that police only carried our classic police activities and not covert surveillance and that they acted in line with the law, doing everything to protect people's lives, personal safety and property.