crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
3. Proving criminal offences that do not fall under the statute of limitations
Under the communist regime, data on the majority of gravesites and victims were protected in
the records of the Secret Police – the State Security Service. Unfortunately, all those documents were
destroyed in 1990. The remaining documents were revised and contain no data that could incriminate
those who executed or ordered the killings.
The Police and the prosecution therefore had to start working on individual gravesites, and find the
person responsible for the killings by means of identifying the victims and the command responsibility
of the political police (Department for Protection of the People, ‘OZNA’ at that time) or the military unit
operating in the area of the gravesite.
Due to the age of data pertinent to the investigation, certain problems that pertain to proving the
offence arose:
– Today, the youngest person who could have been involved in the killings (actually performing
the execution) is around 80 years old, and the commanding staff is at least a few years older;
– According to the information gathered, the people who could provide useful data or were even
involved in the killings will not testify to their own detriment;
– With regard to evidence, there are no useful witnesses to the executions (those who witnessed
them or were themselves victims, are either deceased or will not cooperate because they were
involved in the killings).
Because the killings were executed in the framework of the military and civilian authority, i.e. at
the state level, they were executed conspiratorially as a military operation. And this again brings about
new insurmountable obstacles with regard to proving responsibility for the killings:
1. On the territory of Slovenia there were, at the end of the war, units which executed most of the
killings, and these units originated in other parts of Yugoslavia and were subordinate to the supreme
Yugoslav command, and not to the command at the level of the republic, Slovenia. However, both
factions executed the killings.
2. Due to the interwoven authority functions and destroyed documents, it is impossible to prove whether
a federal military unit or the Slovene civil authority with its political police (Department for Protection
of the People, OZNA), is responsible for individual killings.
3. If the evidence brings us to the arresting officers, there is a new set of objective questions:
– The arresting officer only brought the arrestee to the assembly centre or prison. The person in
charge of the prison, who, in light of their function, could be held responsible, or at least the person
who was familiar with the arrestees’ fate, is already dead today or can not be proven to have held
a commanding function in the relevant time period. (The commanding officers were subject to
frequent changes and the date of the killing is unknown.)
– The person arrested never returned to their home, they were executed. However, we do not know
where this person was taken after the arrest, nor do we know the location of the grave and by
whom and when the killing took place.
– We are also faced with the opposite situation: we have the bodies, but do not know who these
people were and from where they were brought.
– In the most complicated cases (which are very common in view of the gravesites found), the
persons were brought to the assembly camps. In this case we are dealing with many people
interacting with the victims; however, in most cases these two groups do not know each other:
1. one person makes the arrest,
2. the arrestee is interrogated by another person,
3. the arrestee is transported to the prison or the assembly centre by a third person or persons,
4. here the arrestee is interrogated by a fourth person,
5. the fifth person or persons are involved in the transport to the place of execution,
6. the sixth person or persons execute the victim.
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