After the court found me not guilty of
defamation of the former communist secret police chief Janez Zemljarič, his
colleague Silvo Gorenc, who was Yugoslav head of the Udba, decided to withdraw his
criminal complaint against me and my photographer for the same article in the
Reporter magazine.
The trial was scheduled for December 4, but
it was stopped due to withdrawal of the charge. Mr. Gorenc wrote in the
explanation that he is an 88-year old man suffering from serious heart disease.
He added it had taken very long time since his lawsuit was filed in April 2014,
so he wasn’t interested in continuing the criminal law.In January and February 2014 I wrote for the Reporter magazine some articles about the Udba crimes in Austria and Germany in the 1970s. I wrote about the murders of Croatian emigrants committed by killers of the Yugoslav secret police which was led by Slovenian top officials.
Silvo Gorenc was at the helm of its Slovenian branch from 1967 to 1969, then he led the Slovenian ministry of interior and after that he was the head of Yugoslav Udba from 1972 to 1974. On the other hand, Janez Zemljarič was in charge of the Slovenian Udba from 1973 to 1978.
As I wrote in my articles, Mr. Gorenc as the head of the Yugoslav secret police was responsible for the kidnapping of the Croatian student Stjepan Crnogorac in Salzburg in July 1972 and his disappearance without any traces after his interrogation in Ljubljana. Crnogorac was suspected of being connected with a group of Croatian guerrillas who crossed the border to trigger an uprising against the Yugoslav regime in the Croatian part of Bosnia.
I also published a document of the former secret police found by the researcher Roman Leljak in the Slovene State Archive relating this kidnapping. It read that Boris Mužič from the helm of the Slovenian Udba sent some data to Silvo Gorenc to Belgrade asking him for the payment of the agents who carried out the so called arresting of Crnogorac.
After Mr Leljak’s revealing of these documents the Austrian State Prosecution in Salzburg ordered the investigation of this crime and requested from the Slovenian police to interrogate Mr. Gorenc and Mr. Mužič, but the criminal law was later stopped due to lack of evidence. In January 2018 Mr. Mužič died at the age of 94.
Silvo Gorenc also filed a criminal complaint against Roman Leljak but it was also withdrawn when Leljak was acquitted in a private criminal complaint on the request of Janez Zemljarič.
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