By: Spletni časopis
Before the President of the National Assembly, Urška Klakočar Zupančič, today, the new Attorney General, Katarina Bergant, was sworn in, whom the MPs of the government coalition elected last month after the resignation of Drago Šketa in early October last year.
Šketa resigned when he was caught by the police intoxicated. Šketa made history with a visit to Russia just before Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine. There, on the 300th anniversary of the Russian prosecution, he signed a cooperation programme with the head of the Russian prosecutors, Igor Krasnov, between the Russian and our prosecution. Bergant is not entirely unknown either. In 2020, she responded to me from the prosecutor’s office that they would not prosecute Ludvik Tomšič when I checked whether prosecutors would take action because, during the protests when Janša took power, he called for Janša to be killed immediately and chanted “Kill Janša”. Similarly, she communicated that they would not prosecute the campaign of hate speech and calls to violence by opposition parties, with calls for the death of Janšism. In both cases, there were public campaigns encouraging violence, which are only possible if law enforcement agencies turn a blind eye. As with the persecution of Jews and dissenters in fascist Germany or later in socialist dictatorships, including Yugoslavia. These campaigns of violence incitement also stemmed from this communist history.
The consequence of this unusual behaviour by the prosecutor was also that last month, only MPs from government parties voted for her, while the opposition voted against.
The left justified hate speech and calls for violence against political opponents by claiming that they were merely innocent calls to eradicate an ideology they disliked, rather than targeting its carriers. Bergant informed me in May 2020 that they would not prosecute Tomšič at the Ljubljana Prosecutor’s Office because Janša did not agree (initiate proceedings) and because they were unaware that Tomšič had called for murder. Most of what she wrote turned out to be untrue. Janša agreed to prosecute Tomšič, and the police guarding him when he was elected as prime minister, before he had ministers, knew that Tomšič had called for murder. The prosecution later sued him, which ended with a court ruling that Tomšič was not accountable when he publicly called for the murder of the prime minister and the leader of the largest party at that time, Janša.
Before being elected as Attorney General, Bergant led the district prosecutor’s office in Ljubljana, where she had been working since 1997, initially as a professional associate, then as an assistant district prosecutor, becoming a district prosecutor in 2007, a senior prosecutor in 2018, and a supreme state prosecutor in 2024. She has a doctorate in criminal law sciences, and her research focused, as stated by the prosecution, on the relationships between criminal, constitutional, and media law. In 2014, she obtained her doctorate in media law from the Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana. She was a member of expert working groups for the preparation of media and criminal legislation and is the author of research and professional articles in the field of criminal law, as well as a co-author of the Commentary on the General Part of the Criminal Code and the commentary on the Criminal Procedure Act. As an invited lecturer, she has lectured at various training sessions and conferences on topics related to criminal law and state prosecution. Since 2000, she has been a lecturer and holder of the subject of criminal and punitive law at the MLC Faculty of Management and Law in Ljubljana.