Journalists Matej Šurc and Blaž Zgaga spent more than three years investigating and analysing more than 6000 pages of declassified official documents on the illegal trade of arms in Slovenia. They obtained the documents through the Slovene Freedom of Information Act. As the vast majority of arms shipments during the UN embargo was transferred to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, they searched for journalistic colleagues in those countries. At that point, the experienced reporter and journalist trainer Sasa Leković from Croatia joined the team followed by one of the best investigative journalists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Esad Hećimović.
Later also journalists from four other European countries co-operated in the investigation: Lukas Hässig (Switzerland), Beata Biel (Poland), Vlad Lavrov (Ukraine) and Magnus Berglund (Finland).
In total, Zgaga and Šurc wrote 41 chapters with their findings, too much to write into a book, let alone a newspaper article. So they decided to publish them in a trilogy, which they called In the Name of the State. The first volume, published in June 2011, focuses on the sale of arms and ammunition from the former Yugoslav People's Army’s warehouses, which were seized during a ten-day military conflict in Slovenia in 1991. It is called ‘Odprodaja’ or Sell. The second volume, ‘Preprodaja’ or Resell, appeared in October 2011 and deals with the purchase of arms abroad and subsequent resale to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during the UN arms embargo. The third and final volume, ‘Prikrivanje’ or Cover-up, describes how the arms smugglers managed to keep their activities largely concealed for the last twenty years. It was published in April 2012. Leković and Hećimović published their own stories based on the cross-border co-operation in Croatian and Bosnian media.
The best-selling trilogy was recognized with the CEI-SEEMO Award for Outstanding Merits in Investigative Journalism (2012).
SEEMO Condemns Death Threats against Journalists in Slovenia (Scoop.co.nz, 05/12/2011)
