At Thursday’s hearing of Marta Kos, candidate for the new European Commissioner from Slovenia, tensions came to a boiling point. When the subject of Kos’s collaboration with the so-called UDBA – the Directorate for State Security of the former Yugoslavia, i.e. the political police – came up, some left-wing MPs were extremely unhappy. But none …
Marta Kos, the latest candidate for the post of European Commissioner from Slovenia, denies ever having been a collaborator of the UDBA or the Directorate for State Security, the former secret political police of the Yugoslav communist regime. Before the presidential elections, in which she also partook, parts of the official archive documentation were leaked …
The former Yugoslav secret police, known as the Directorate for State Security or UDBA, was in many ways worse than similar Soviet-style agencies. It was known for hunting down and killing political dissidents abroad, many of them innocent people. It was also famous for torture, kidnappings and bombings, and “rigged” trials, targeting real (and phantom) …
Slovenia is still full of Tito’s roads, streets, squares and bridges. His statues and portraits still haunt this country like an evil ghost of the past (we can even find his photos in law enforcement offices!). Every day, as we walk from a Tito’s Road to Kidrič’s Road and onwards to Kardelj’s, we are reminded …
On Thursday, the Golob government decided that Janez Zemljarič, the former director of the State Security Service of Yugoslavia, who was considered one of the most influential godfathers from the background, will be buried with military honours, even though Zemljarič has been accused in the last decade of playing an important role in the State …
