Deputy Interior Minister Astrit Iseni has reacted to photos showing holy water being sprinkled on official police vehicles and facilities in the frames of the Ministry, describing it as a direct violation of the secular state principle and laws.
As he assessed in a social media post on Tuesday, it constitutes inadmissible interference of religion with state institutions and cannot be considered a private religious act.
The Deputy Minister also said the event had involved several members of a traffic police unit, in cooperation with a MOC-OA member, and represented neither the official stand nor the institutional action of the Ministry.
Furthermore, Iseni stressed that all those that had organized or allowed the act, those that hadn’t prevented it, as well as those that had enabled a MOC-OA member to enter the Ministry’s facilities to perform religious activities would face accountability.
The Interior Ministry afterwards said its Internal Department Control was taking measures and activities to fully determine the circumstances related to the photos.