The former Udba chief Silvo Gorenc withdrew his criminal complaint against a journalist and a photographer

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Silvo Gorenc also filed a criminal complaint against Roman Leljak but it was also withdrawn when Leljak was acquitted in a private criminal complaint on the request of Janez Zemljarič.

Here are links for more information about this case:

http://igorkrsinar.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-former-udba-chief-silvo-gorenc.html

http://igorkrsinar.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-court-ruled-i-didnt-defame-ex-udba.html

https://reporter.si/clanek/slovenija/bivsi-sef-jugoudbe-silvo-gorenc-umika-kazensko-tozbo-zoper-novinarja-igorja-krsinarja-in-fotografa-primoza-lavreta-670777

The former Udba chief Silvo Gorenc prosecutes journalists

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.

See also: The Honor and Good Name of Mr. Janez Zemljarič