crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
of the Central Committee of the CPS. 23 This means that we can also not speak of the independence of
the public prosecutor’s office and that the public prosecutor’s office was in fact the institution in which
the Party’s influence had the greatest effect. This form of organisation of the public prosecutor’s office
also provided a strong assurance that judicial proceedings would proceed in the way that the Party
envisioned. This was particularly characteristic of so-called political judicial proceedings.
At these proceedings the authorities treated political opponents as enemies of the people, and the
most frequently prosecuted criminal offence was opposition to the new authorities. This criminal offence
was investigated exclusively by the OZNA/UDV, and the main purpose of the trials was to establish the
commission of “acts against the people” by political opponents and to revenge them. 24 They were tried
pursuant to the Act on Criminal Offences Against the People and the State, in which various criminal
offences were defined in general terms, and the law permitted adjudication following the principle of
analogy. This means that individuals could be convicted of a criminal offence, which was merely similar
and not equal to that which had been legally established. This greatly expanded the spectrum of criminal
offences, which could be tried pursuant to this law. In addition to very harsh prison sentences and seizure
of property, 211 convicts were executed on the basis of the courts’ death sentences between 1945 and
1951, of whom 203 were political prisoners. The greatest number of political prisoners were executed in
1947 (42) and 1948 (43). 25
In the political trials in the first two years after the end of the war, 26 most of the people convicted were
those whom the Party already considered to be political adversaries during the Second World War. The Party
changed these tactics in 1947 with the Nagode Trial, when it began seeking revenge on former co-operators
with the Liberation Front. In 1946, the OZNA/UDV directed its operations towards the opposition within
the People’s Front. At that time in Slovenia, they began to investigate Črtomir Nagode and his colleagues.
At the trial in 1947, the court imposed extremely harsh sentences, including several death sentences, but
only Nagode was executed. At the trial the defendants were presented as British spies, and not as opposition.
The situation was similar at the Dachau Trials in 1948 and 1949, when more than 30 former prisoners from
Dachau were sentenced, including 15 death sentences, and 11 were executed. At that time the authorities also
took revenge on their own people, as several respected Slovenian pre-war communists were convicted. 27
4. Judicial proceedings against illegal groups
Between 1945 and 1950, around 35 larger illegal groups were operating which had arisen as a
form of resistance to the measures of the authorities. The members of these groups were mostly farmers
and people in hiding, and some were groups of people who had been sent into Slovenia through political
emigration from the British-occupied area in Austria and Italy. Some of these groups were armed, and
their members engaged in armed clashes with the UDV, the Army and the National Police.
These groups had an anti-communist orientation. The Party and the UDV asserted that the objective
of their operations was to destroy the communist authorities and enable the return of King Peter II
to Yugoslavia. 28 This was supposed to have been achieved through political, military, espionage and
propaganda campaigns, which were also connected with foreign intelligence services. Their operations
in Slovenia were supposed to have been supported and guided by emigrant intelligence centres in
refugee camps in Austria and Italy. 29
23
Ferjančič, Šturm, Lawlessness, pp. 28–29; Peter Kobe, “Criminal Law during the Dachau Trials”, in: The Dachau Trials, p. 95, Josip
Hrnčević, Svjedočanstva (Record), Zagreb 1984.
24
Vodušek Starič, “Background of Judicial Proceedings”, p. 152.
25
Zdenko Zavadlav, Partizani, obveščevalci, jetniki (Partizans, Informers, Prisoners), Ljubljana 1996.
26
The most significant were the Christmas trial of 1945, the trial of Home Guard General Leon Rupnik, his assistant Milko Vizjak, SS
General Erwin Rösener, head of the police administration during the war Lovro Hacin, Ljubljana Bishop Gregorij Rožman and the leader
of the Slovenian People’s Party before the war Dr Miha Krek in August 1946 and the trial of Dr Friedrich Rainer et al. in July 1947.
27
Gabrič, “Prosecution of Political Opponents”, pp. 862–863; Usoda slovenskih demokratičnih izobražencev (The Fate of Educated
Slovenian Democrats), Ljubljana 2001; Ljubo Sirc, Med Hitlerjem in Titom (Between Hitler and Tito), Ljubljana 1992; Vodušek Starič,
The Seizing of Power; Martin Ivanič (ed.), The Dachau Trials, Ljubljana 1990.
28
Cf. 5 th Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Ljubljana 1948 (5 th Congress CPY), p. 318, 321–322; AS 1931 Republican
Secretariat for Internal Affairs of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia (AS 1931), GOC-NKKJ; Grum; Kornhauser; MRA, Maribor District
Court, Ko 287/46, Ko 288/46, Ko 290/46; Nova Gorica Regional Archive (NGRA), Gorica District Court, K 41/49; K 62/50; Celje
Historical Archive (CHA), Celje District Court, K 15/49.
29
Cf. AS 1931, GOC-NKKJ.
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