In the early 1990s, Slovenia took advantage of the wars in the Balkans and sold weapons to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the main dealers were the then Minister of Defense Janez Janša, his associates and some companies, claim the authors of the trilogy "In the name of the state", Slovenian journalists Matej Šurc and Blaž Zgaga .
Šurc and Zgaga recently received a special award from the Central European Initiative (CEI) and the Southeast European Media Organization (SEEMO) for investigative journalism for the first of three books in which they openly and documentedly talk about traders, blackmail and weapons that Slovenia sold to the defenders of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina .
Among other things, the books also mention the plot surrounding the police helicopter, which the government of BiH ordered and paid for through Slovenia before the war, but Slovenia kept it in the name of a debt for weapons, which is still a burden on the relations between the two countries.
In an interview for Beta, one of the two authors, Radio Slovenia journalist Matej Šurc, describes the situation in Slovenia in the XNUMXs, when "the idea of selling arms to Croatia and BiH was born." He says that at that time "Slovenia was seriously preparing for independence and possible clashes with the JNA" and that "that is why it was buying weapons abroad".
"Until June 20, 1991, the first large shipment of weapons arrived in Kopar by ship from Bulgaria, Slovenia did not dare to formally begin the process of independence," says Šurc.
He believes that the import of weapons was "necessary and completely legitimate" because it "enabled defense against the more numerous and superior JNA", but reminds that "the armed conflicts between the Slovenian territorials, the police and the JNA ended in ten days" and that "weapons, of course , was too much".
Surplus weapons were resold to Croatia and part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from which, as the author explains, "some military-political structures and individuals in Slovenia got rich."
Šurc describes it in detail in the second book of his trilogy, and from the published documents it follows that the Ministry of Defense, whose minister from May 1990 to March 1994 was Janez Janša, was responsible for the resale of weapons, and operational tasks were carried out by the Military Intelligence Service, which then led by Andrej Lovšin.
Šurc claims that despite the UN ban, Slovenia sold weapons and that the Slovenian leadership was also aware of this fact.
"Essentially, the state leadership, i.e. the Presidency led by Milan Kučan and the government as an executive body headed by the Christian Democrat Lojze Peterle at the time, were not only informed, but the Presidency also adopted the decision to help Croatia with weapons, which was then was attacked," he said.
However, Šurz states that "good intentions were born". "Seeing from today's eyes, it was a mistake, because they did not define exactly who should deal with it and especially who will record or control the sale of weapons... That is why even today it is not known where a significant part of the money from the sale of weapons of the former JNA went".
Šurc says that in Bosnia and Herzegovina the main man in the arms trade with Slovenia was "Hasan Čengić, Deputy Minister of Defense" who later told the Slovenian parliament numerous details about the arms trade between Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, "which turned the story like a boomerang against Janša".
When asked how Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia paid for arms to Slovenia, Šurc says that during Janša's time, the Ministry of Defense officially claimed that arms sales to Croatia were made through oil compensation, but "in the end Janša, pressed by the evidence, admitted that cash was also involved".
Šurc states that there are "very few documents on which you can see the prices of individual pieces of weapons" but, as he adds, "it can still be concluded that they were often five or six times more than Janša claimed in his official report". "So, the Slovenes took advantage of the wars in the Balkans in the early nineties and played well against both Croats and Bosnians," adds the author.
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