At the end of the Trenta trial, the prosecution asked for a two-year prison sentence for Janez Janša and the first defendant in the case, Branko Kastelic. For Klemen Gantar, it proposed a one-year suspended prison sentence. A rally was held in front of the Celje court, at which a number of speakers, opposing the abuse of the judiciary for political purposes, took the floor.
Before the final part of the Trenta trial, Janez Janša called on the media to report correctly on the state of the Tonder homestead at the time of the sale. As a didactic tool for the media, he brought with him the house number of the homestead.
“The whole process has been roughly the same as the Patria case, so the expectations are roughly similar. I hope that you will report real things from the last hearing – to help you, I have brought the house number from Tonder’s homestead, the property that was sold at the time. Now, for 15, 20 years, all that is being talked about are some worthless plots of land, and all that is being shown are the ruins that the houses have turned into since then. This helps the prosecution to create the impression that it was a worthless deal,” he told the cameras.
The last hearing in the Trenta trial took place in Celje on Tuesday. The reading of the last words began. The President of the Trial Chamber announced that the case would soon be ready for a verdict. The verdict is expected to come as early as Friday.
.@JJansaSDS ob začetku današnjega naroka: Cel proces je potekal približno tako kot zadeva Patria, zato so tudi pričakovanja približno podobna. Upam, da boste iz zadnjega naroka poročali o realnih stvareh-v pomoč sem vam prinesel hišno številko iz Tonderjeve domačije, posestva, ki… pic.twitter.com/LXIL5BDKoB
— SDS (@strankaSDS) April 15, 2025
Continuation of the big rally in front of the court
A protest rally, called “Continuing the resistance against the crooked judiciary”, started in front of the court on Tuesday at noon. The rally was attended by many people, as this is a fateful moment for the Trenta case and for confidence in the justice system itself.
Pictures from the scene started to appear online even before the rally started. In one picture, the fence that was put up in front of the entrance to the Celje court can be clearly seen.
Celjsko sodišče, danes. Ograje v imenu ljudstva ali strah pred resnico. pic.twitter.com/U8d5OiysuC
— Boris Vagaja (@vagaja_boris) April 15, 2025
The magazine Demokracija (Democracy) also reported that Damjan Podjed of the company Nepremičnine (Real Estate) is suspected of the same offence as the trio, but the Ljubljana judge rejected the prosecution motion.
Rally participants ready
Rally participants posted pictures on their way to Celje. Former MP Mojca Škrinjar wrote on her X profile: “Let’s go to Celje!!! To get rid of the crooked judiciary!!!” Another X user responded to her, writing: “We are also going to Celje, to turn off the lights at the courthouse, because they have been burning for two nights.”
In the meantime, loud protesters had already gathered in front of the court. The judge ordered the windows of the courtroom to be closed because of the noise.
The prosecutor has proposed a two-year prison sentence for Janez Janša, with a reasoning that is practically identical to the one in the published draft judgment. The difference in the sentence between the draft that was made public and the prosecutor’s proposal is, therefore, only two months. We expect the verdict to come on Friday. The prosecutor also proposed a two-year prison sentence for the defendant (former director of Imos) Branko Kastelic, and a one-year suspended sentence for Klemen Gantar, reports the Slovenian Press Agency (Slovenska tiskovna agencija – STA).
Jelka Godec: In the courtrooms, the wishes of the deep state are being carried out
MP Jelka Godec, leader of the parliamentary group of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), was the first to speak at the rally. “Today, we are no longer wondering how much longer they will hold the Slovenian nation hostage, how much longer they will continue to cowardly hide in the background, and process false affairs before every election and repress and imprison those who stand in the way of their complete destruction and selling-out of the Slovenian state. No! This time, we will put an end to it,” she said. She added that there are more and more people who do not want more parties for one term, who then run the country. As she put it, these are “quasi-parties being created in Murgle and at the Ljubljana City Hall.”
“They set up Janković for the people, then Cerar, then Šarec, then Golob. Now, they are waiting and creating a new face. They create them and then discard them after they have been used,” she said, adding that nobody remembers the parties they led anymore, and Golob’s Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda) will also soon be consigned to the ash heap of history.
“There are more and more of us who know that the wishes of the deep state are being carried out in the courtrooms,” said MP Godec. She believes that courtrooms are still dominated by a stunted old-regime mentality. “The influence of the deep state is perpetuated in courtrooms,” she noted.
Former minister and SDS MP Zvone Černač then took the podium. “If Slovenia were truly a state governed by the rule of law, we would not be standing here today because the political process of Trenta, which began with the reporting of the current MP, then-journalist Mojca Šetinc Pašek, back in 2011, would not have happened,” he recalled in his introduction, adding that the Trenta trial is not actually about any criminal offences, but is instead a renewed political trial against the leader of the largest opposition party, “because the Patria political trial collapsed on the directors in the Constitutional Court a good ten years ago”.
Černač pointed out that this time, the most absurd accusation was used to prevent Janša from leading the government again. “The first defendant is not our President, but the former director of a private company, who is on trial, mind you, for allegedly damaging this company by buying a property in Trenta from Janez Janša, by signing a contract for 120 thousand euros, and then selling the property for 140 thousand euros. That is why Mr Kastelic is being sued,” explained Černač. Since they could not achieve their goals otherwise, they dragged Janša into the court story by putting him on trial for allegedly helping Kastelic. “There was no crime in the act that did not take place, there was no crime in this case, and it is obvious to everyone that there was no damage. It was a private transaction and a good purchase,” he added.
Černač recalled that the prosecutors in this political process are Boštjan Valenčič and Luka Moljk. “The same prosecutors as in the case of the dilapidated building at Litijska 51, which the Golob government recently overpaid for over three million euros out of your pockets, with taxpayers’ money – they bought a dilapidated building which will never be useful,” he recalled. He added that they were acting differently in that case, because the contract for the purchase was signed by the then-Minister of Justice Dominika Švarc Pipan, who is not even among the accused in the case. And in the transaction with public funds, Švarc Pipan had two helpers, namely, Finance Minister Klemen Boštjančič and Prime Minister Robert Golob, who are also not among the accused in the Litijska case.
“Slovenia is therefore not a country governed by the rule of law, and we are not all equal before the law in Slovenia. The crooked trial that is taking place in the Trenta political affair and that took place eleven years ago in the Patria political trial against the same man, against the same individual, is a crime. A crooked trial is a crime of the worst kind,” said Černač.
“The time is coming when the law will truly apply equally to all. The time is coming, ladies and gentlemen, when prosecutors and judges will be held accountable for such crooked trials. The time is coming, and it is not so far off, when prosecutors and judges will be held accountable for needlessly spending hundreds of thousands of euros of your money on rigged political trials. And the time is coming when they will be held accountable for their work by the people, on behalf of those they are judging,” the MP announced, adding that the 11th of May will be the day when a referendum will be held against the privileges and against the pernicious Golob clique.
Simonič: An army of patriots is standing here today
“Rain or shine, victory or defeat, your army is standing here, and today, the army of patriots is standing here, standing behind Janez Janša and standing for democracy,” said Luka Simonič, President of the youth wing of the SDS party, at the beginning of his speech.
“The Slovenian Democratic Youth (Slovenska demokratska mladina – SDM) is growing stronger, and Janez Janša is supported today by hundreds of young people across Slovenia. It is time for those who want to work for Slovenia to stop being chased out of Slovenia,” he said. It is time for an environment that works for young people and for Slovenians, not for those who line their pockets and live off taxpayers’ money, he said.
“Today, not only Janez Janša and his family are on trial in these courtrooms, but all proud Slovenians are on trial,” he said.
Dr Anton Žunter then took the floor. “I have had enough of the 40-year persecution of Janez Janša,” said Dr Žunter. He recalled the anger during the pre-independence period, when Janša was tried in Ljubljana in a foreign language, with the support of the party leadership of the time. “Slovenia stood up then, the Slovenian Spring was born and, as a result, the communist regime fell and Yugoslavia collapsed,” he said.
As he recalled, persecution continued in 1994, during the “Depala vas” affair, followed by the Patria trial, which destroyed two elections. “Today, we are here for the next judicial affair, called Trenta. Today, we are here to tell the authorities that we have had enough,” he said. “We are no longer afraid. We are not afraid of them,” he said firmly.
Then, another representative of the youth took the stage. “I am speaking today because I believe that silence in times of injustice is the most dangerous compromise. I am speaking because I am part of a generation that will have to live with the consequences of what is happening today. Democracy does not crumble overnight, it crumbles slowly, with the silent normalisation of abuses. With politically biased decisions. With a loss of trust in the institutions that are there to protect us,” she said. She added that the biggest threat to democracy is the abuse of the judiciary for political purposes.
“The case of Janez Janša is not an isolated incident. It is not the first case in which the system has been used against him. But we can make sure it is the last. Because today, it is not about one man, it is not about right or left, it is about whether we in Slovenia will still be able to distinguish between justice and political interest,” she said. She recalled that similar cases also occur abroad, when political elites abuse the judiciary as a tool to settle scores with their opponents.
In his speech, MP Andrej Kosi said that today, they had gathered in Celje to say a firm “no” to the elite in Murgle. “We are here today to show the elite in Murgle that we care about our homeland and about Slovenia. While the left-wing elite is running out of new faces, they have hijacked the judiciary,” he said.
“It is time to put Slovenia on the right track. The path of reason, the path of democracy and the path of justice. We will no longer allow the elite from Ljubljana to impose new taxes, to destroy our countryside, our Slovenian word and our culture. That is why we will go to the referendum on the 11th of May and say a resounding NO,” he continued.
Karin Planinšek: The other side is afraid of us
Karin Planinšek, an online influencer and SDM Vice-President, was next to speak. “Someone told me that the night is darkest before the dawn. That is exactly what is happening now. The other side has started to lose, and they are afraid of us. That’s why they are becoming more and more extreme, more and more aggressive, more and more hostile. But I say let them be, because we will not be defeated,” she predicted.
“The time is coming when these incompetent and corrupt people will be replaced by those who actually know what justice and truth are, and who live it every day,” she announced.
In the event that Janez Janša is convicted, like Marine le Pen, the leader of the French conservatives who was recently convicted in France, she predicted daily protests until Janez Janša and other innocent people are acquitted.
SDS MP Alenka Helbl said that the government rules by lies and deceit, manipulation and insults. “By making fun of hard-working and industrious Slovenians, the elderly who built our homes, young people who are looking for their own way and a place under the sun, they are, in fact, lining their pockets and pointing the finger at others,” she added. She is convinced that the current government is not building, but tearing down the foundations of a democratic, sovereign state that is governed by the rule of law.
She stressed that the script for Slovenia’s future is being written by those for whom Slovenia has never been the preferred option. “Our destiny is being shaped by those who do not care about all of us. They only care about your money or ours. We will soon get rid of this shameless, backward thinking that is killing us. The winds of Slovenian spring will blow again,” she predicted.
MP Bojan Podkrajšek revealed that he comes from the same constituency as the judge who is leading the Trenta case. “Thank you to all of you, to all of you gathered here and to all of you who are watching us from your homes, who have been building our common country for 34 years,” he said, stressing the need to persevere and calling the Trenta trial a “disgrace”.
Some time ago, he spoke to a Croatian citizen who told him, “You have had your country for 35 years, and you are destroying a key independence leader. This is not possible in our country.” He also reminded everyone of the bizarre episode in Slovenian politics in which the mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković, referred to himself as a potential Serbian prime minister. “This is only possible in Slovenia,” he added.
They will gather again for the announcement of the verdict
The last speaker was MP Černač, who thanked the audience for their participation. He urged everyone to attend the rally on the day the verdict is announced, which will most likely be this Friday, when it will be very important for the participants to gather again. “Thank you all once again. You can see that we are dealing with barbarians. They are barbarians, and that is why this time, we are going to do what has not been done in previous years. We will liberate Slovenia. We are going to liberate Slovenia from those who are breaking the Constitution and breaking the law. Thank you again from the bottom of my heart, thank you also on behalf of the President and on behalf of all those who are being unjustly tried in this court,” he concluded.
Ž. K.
