On Thursday, Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kalinak met with Kazakh journalist Balli Marzec, whom the Slovak police detained for thirteen hours on Wednesday, when she protested in front of the Presidential Palace against the undemocratic regime in Kazakhstan, while Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev was meeting with Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic inside.
At the meeting with the Slovak interior minister, Ms. Marzec said that when she came to visit Slovakia with her colleague, her objective was neither to encounter the Slovak police nor the interior minister. "I came to tell Slovak society about the situation in Kazakhstan," she said. She believes it will be cleared up why she was in police detention for thirteen hours and why the police hit her. "I believe that democracy in Slovakia is so strong that everything will be cleared up," she added. Ms. Marzec said that the police finally questioned her only late in the evening. She was detained all day without being told why. She, however, thinks that she was kept at the police station for so long so that she, an opposition journalist, would not have the opportunity to question President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Interior Minister Robert Kalinak admitted that the police may have erred in their Wednesday intervention. "Every mistake is a lesson to us and we will have to take a lesson in this case," he added and continued by saying that definitive conclusions would be drawn only after the intervention has been investigated by the police inspection.
The interior minister invited Ms. Marzec and her family for a weekend stay in the High Tatras. "I would take her visit as an opportunity to inform her of the outcome of the investigation of the police intervention against her," said Mr. Kalinak, following the meeting.
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