By Igor Kršinar
After Janez Zemljarič, the former chief of Slovenian communist secrete
police Udba, also Silvo Gorenc, the chief of Yugoslav Udba from 1972 to 1974,
filed a criminal complaint against me and two photographers for defamation in some
articles in the weekly magazine Reporter in January this year. Like Zemljarič he
also felt dishonoured because of some articles about the Udba murders of some
Croatian emigrants. According to the Slovenian Penal Code defamation in press
media is punishable by fine or by imprisonment up to six months.
When I wrote the story on the murder of the Croatian emigrant Nikica
Martinović in Klagenfurt in Austria in 1975, at the time Janez Zemljarič was
the chief of the Slovenian Udba, I also mentioned another case revealed by the
researcher Roman Leljak. According to the document he found in the Slovenian
State Archive, the Slovenian Udba in 1972 had organised a kidnapping of the
Croatian student Stjepan Crnogorac in Salzburg in Austria where he had lived
and studied. The Udba agents illegally transported him across the
Austrian-Yugoslav border to Ljubljana where he was interrogated by Slovenian
and Yugoslav Udba officers. After the interrogation he disappeared without
traces, it is presumed that he was murdered and buried somewhere in Slovenia. During
the interrogation the Slovenian participant Boris Mužič who was then the deputy
chief of the Slovenian branch of Udba sent two letters to the then Yugoslav
Udba chief Silvo Gorenc in which he informed him about this operation. He asked
him for some documents about the arrested Crnogorac and the money for their
collaborators in this secret operation who were actually the kidnappers of this
young Croatian.
Since my text was basing on those documents Gorenc felt dishonoured
although my story was written around two months after some other media had
written about it following Leljak’s press conference. Gorenc also felt
dishonoured because I asked myself in the text how it was possible that Croatia
did not prosecute the murderers of its citizens since the Germans demanded the
extradition of those Croatians suspected organising the murders of their own
countrymen in Germany. I concluded that sooner or later this would happen and
for people like Zemljarič, Gorenc and their collaborators Slovenia will become
a prison. I also mentioned other crimes committed by Udba when Gorenc was at
its helm, for example the assassination of the Croatian family Ševo in Italy in
1972 including nine years old girl who was also among the victims. This writing
was also considered as defamation by the then Yugoslav Udba chief.
Gorenc was also dishonoured by citing the book The Red Horizons written
by the former chief of the Romanian secret police Ion Pacepa. In this book he
wrote about his memories of his service under the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
He also described Ceausescu’s meeting with the Yugoslav dictator Tito when the
latter asked him for a favour, the help on the kidnapping of his opponent
Vladimir Dapčević. As a trade-off Tito promised that Silvo Gorenc and then
Yugoslav interior minister Luka Banović would murder anybody on Ceausescu’s
choice in the West. I wrote also that Gorenc denied the deal because the
kidnapping happened in 1975 when he was no longer in charge of the Udba. But I
also added that according to the persons attending this meeting the deal was
made before his withdrawal from the Udba.
The first article has the title Call
Zemljarič for Murder and the second An
Angel between the Executioners. Like Zemljarič also Gorenc has felt dishonoured
because of the published photomontage on the front page of the magazine, thus
he blamed the photographers Primož Lavre and Pavel Perc for doing this. On this
photomontage Zemljarič is standing with his Udba companion Gorenc both armed
with guns and there is also Milan Kučan, the former chief of Slovenia’s
Communist Party, above them as an angel. In fact the photographers have nothing
to do with this photomontage, Lavre is even not the author of the published
photographs. The photograph of Gorenc was bought from Perc who actually
couldn’t know about this photomontage in Reporter.
After these
articles two books were published a few weeks ago in which the story of the kidnapping
and the murder of Stjepan Crnogorac is additionally described. Roman Leljak has
presented the book Udba and Igor Omerza has presented his new book Call U
(Udba) for murder. They both write about Silvo Gorenc’s responsibility for this
crime. Since nobody of the former Udba chiefs were prosecuted in Slovenia there
will be an opportunity for some issues when the trial for defamation in court
starts.
