Anuška Delić has spent her career doing exactly what investigative journalism demands: unmasking a shady government and holding it to account. The Slovenian reporter, best known for her work at the investigative outlet Necenzurirano, now finds herself accused by state prosecutors of unlawfully leaking classified intelligence agency secrets. For press freedom advocates across Europe, the case has become one of the most alarming examples of a government turning the machinery of criminal law against the very journalists who expose its failures.
Who is Anuška Delić and what did she report?
Delić built her reputation over more than a decade of relentless investigative work, focusing primarily on far-right extremism, political corruption, and the inner workings of Slovenia's security apparatus. Her reporting drew on confidential sources within state institutions, a standard practice for investigative journalists worldwide. Among her most significant stories were investigations into alleged links between Slovenian political figures and extremist networks, as well as exposés on the conduct of the Slovenian Intelligence and Security Agency (SOVA). It was this reporting that eventually drew the attention of prosecutors.
The accusations against her centre on the claim that she received and published classified information obtained from within SOVA, in violation of Slovenian law. Delić and her legal team reject the characterisation, arguing that her work falls squarely within the protected sphere of public-interest journalism. The distinction matters enormously: in most liberal democracies, a journalist who receives leaked information is not legally equivalent to the official who leaks it, and prosecuting the former is widely regarded as an attack on press freedom itself.
The legal and political context
Slovenia is a European Union member state and a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, yet the prosecution of Delić has raised uncomfortable questions about how robustly those protections function in practice. The case emerged during a period of significant political turbulence in the country, with successive governments trading accusations of corruption and abuse of state institutions. Critics of the prosecution argue that it was initiated during a period when figures Delić had investigated were in positions of power, lending the charges a distinctly political flavour.
The broader European context makes the case harder to dismiss as an isolated incident. Across the continent, reporters investigating intelligence agencies, organised crime, and political corruption have faced legal pressure that critics describe as strategic litigation against public participation, or SLAPP. The chilling effect of such prosecutions extends well beyond the individual journalist: when editors and reporters watch a colleague face criminal charges for doing her job, the temptation to self-censor becomes real. This dynamic is explored in detail by reporters who cover in-house censorship and the pressures media managers place on uncomfortable stories, a pattern that plays out at every level of the industry.
Source protection and the journalism question
At the heart of the Delić case is a question that journalism scholars and legal experts have debated for decades: should the receipt of classified information by a journalist be treated as a criminal act? Most established democratic frameworks say no, provided the publication serves the public interest. Source protection is not a courtesy extended to reporters; it is a structural necessity for accountability journalism. Without the guarantee that a source's identity will be protected, whistleblowers inside government institutions simply stop talking.
Delić's situation draws uncomfortable parallels with cases elsewhere. Investigative reporters who work on national security beats routinely navigate legal grey zones, and the tools they use to protect themselves and their sources have become increasingly important. Email encryption for journalists is one of the most basic defensive measures available, yet many reporters in smaller newsrooms with fewer resources remain exposed. The technical vulnerability of sources is often as serious as the legal vulnerability of the journalists themselves.
What the case signals for European press freedom
International press freedom organisations including Reporters Without Borders and the European Federation of Journalists have called for the charges against Delić to be dropped. They argue that prosecuting a journalist for publishing information obtained through sources within a state agency, when that information exposes genuine wrongdoing, inverts the proper relationship between accountability and state power. The state, in this reading, is using secrecy laws not to protect national security but to protect itself from scrutiny.
That inversion is not unique to Slovenia. Governments that feel exposed by investigative reporting frequently reach for the legal tools at hand, whether they are official secrets laws, defamation suits, or data-protection regulations. The effect in each case is the same: a journalist spends years defending herself in court rather than reporting, and the stories that might have followed never get written. The question for European institutions, and for the EU's own media freedom frameworks, is whether they are willing to intervene meaningfully when member states behave this way.
Solidarity and the road ahead
Delić has received substantial support from colleagues in Slovenia and abroad. Her case has been taken up by media freedom NGOs, legal defence funds, and fellow journalists who see her prosecution as a test of the standards the EU claims to uphold. Slovenian civil society groups have organised public events in her support, and several European parliamentarians have raised the matter formally.
The outcome of the case will carry weight far beyond Ljubljana. If prosecutors succeed in obtaining a conviction, it will establish a precedent that intelligence-related reporting in Slovenia carries criminal risk, even when it serves the public interest. If the charges are dropped or Delić is acquitted, it sends a different signal: that the law has limits when deployed against journalism in good faith. Either way, the case sits alongside a growing body of evidence that the relationship between investigative reporters and the states they cover is becoming more adversarial. When institutions actively block journalists from accessing information, the pressure on those who find other means of getting the story only intensifies.
For now, Anuška Delić continues to work. That alone, given the circumstances, is an act of defiance worth noting.