STA, 16 April 2019 - Milko Novič has been acquitted of murdering Chemistry Institute boss Janko Jamnik in December 2014 in a retrial after the Supreme Court quashed the original ruling sentencing him to 25 years in prison in 2017.

Our earlier coverage on this case can be found here

The verdict was reached by the judging panel of the Ljubljana District Court and announced on Tuesday after the court heard closing arguments and re-examined expert witnesses who could not make a conclusive judgement.

It also heard the minutes of the recent crime scene reconstruction which showed that Novič did not have enough time to reach the crime scene from his home in the window between his alibi and the time of the murder.

Reading the judgement, the presiding judge Zvjezdan Radonjić, said the trial proved that Novič was not a murderer, and that it was clear he could not reach the crime scene within the time at his disposal.

"Not only that there's no proof that he is guilty, but it has been fully proven that he is not the perpetrator," the judge concluded.

The prosecution, which sought a 25 year prison sentence, in accordance with the original sentence given to Novič, announced an appeal, while Novič said he was happy with the outcome.

"The case turned out the way it was based on arguments and, above all, judge Zvjezdan Radonjić's ascertaining that the prosecution has not provided a single piece of evidence," the acquitted said.

Novič, a former employee at the National Institute of Chemistry, was initially convicted of murdering his boss and sentenced to 25 years in prison in April 2017.

However, after being upheld by the Ljubljana Higher Court, the ruling was quashed by the Supreme Court in October 2018 and a retrial was ordered.

Jamnik was shot in the head twice in a parking lot in Ljubljana as the institute held its Christmas party in December 2014. He died three days later and Novič was soon arrested as the main suspect.

The minutes of the reconstruction of the events, read by judge Radonjić today, showed that it would take Novič between 11 and 14 minutes to reach the crime scene, or between 15 and 18 minutes in the pre-Christmas period when the traffic is much busier.

The judge said the time available for the defendant to commit the murder would have been 8 minutes at the most, while the Supreme Court, in quashing the case, said the time could be even shorter, that is six minutes.

"No measurement whatsoever could have put the time within six or eight minutes," the judge said before the judging panel retreated to reach a verdict, adding that the time was measured by the route that was the least favourable for the defendant.

He rejected the prosecution's assessment that the reconstruction was conducted in a "too touristy" pace. Prosecutor Blanka Žgajner had assessed that the actual events would have likely happened much faster than reconstruction had shown.

In reading the verdict later, Radonjić also cited data from mobile base stations pinged by Novič's phone at the time of the murder which he said did not indicate Novič's guilt, because he did not find it likely Novič would have responded from the crime scene to humorous text messages he was being sent.

The judge indicated that Jamnik's murder could have been linked to another case in which Lebanese chemist Michel Stephan is tried for allegedly ordering the murder of another Chemistry Institute official, Janez Plavec. He urged the prosecution to start looking into developments at the institute.

Radonjić also alleged pressure against him, saying that right from the start of the trial the court's president, Marjan Pogačnik, had been pressured to discipline him so he would judge the way he should.

He alleged that one of those who suggested his disciplining was Harij Furlan, the head of the Specialised Prosecution Service. He also said that he was subject to a smear campaign in the media.

The judge said that, because he wanted to grant a fair trial to Novič, he would never get promoted and would likely face suspension: "Novič having a fair trial hinges on my decision to ruin my career."

In her closing argument prosecutor Blanka Žgajner insisted the murder charge had been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

She alleged that Novič committed the deed out of callous revenge because he was sacked from his job at the institute and because he had unfinished business with Jamnik.

After the verdict was announced, Žgajnar announced an appeal, saying she was shocked that "half of the explanation of the acquittal concerned judge Zvjezdan Radonjić, who talked about being pressured".

Commenting on the judge's suggestion that Jamnik's murder could be linked to Stephan, Žgajnar questioned the judge's right to interfere in another judge's case.

Novič's defence counsel Jože Hribernik commented that "everyone is in a bit of shock", saying that the judge had pinpointed the essential when talking about pressure on him.

"The man who has been convicted and who has been premeditatedly intended to be convicted again is free today," Hribernik said, adding that although he knew there was pressure, he was shocked by how severe the pressure on the judge was.

He agreed with the judge that Stephan may have "done away with Jamnik", saying he believed there was plenty of evidence this was likely. Meanwhile, his client would not speculate about the possibility.

Hribernik had already argued in his closing statement that the charges against his client were not a fateful mistake but rather a wilful decision on the part of law enforcement to convict an innocent man instead of the actual murderer, who could not be found.

The German expert witnesses re-examined by the court today could neither confirm nor rule out that the traces of gunpowder on Novič's clothes and skin proved he was the murderer.

The judging panel turned down the prosecution's motion to appoint new expert witnesses for ballistics and chemistry.

The hearing today witnessed friction between the presiding judge and the lawyer of Jamnik's wife as the damaged party, Miha Kunič, whom the judge would not grant the opportunity to question one of the German expert witnesses, while restricting his questions in the case of the other.

The newspaper Delo reported earlier that Kunič had filed a criminal complaint against the judge, alleging biased, unfair and unlawful judging.

Judge Radonjić accused Kunič of destructing the evidence-taking procedure, announcing that he would file a complaint against him with the Bar Association with the proposal for his expulsion.

STA, 18 December - The retrial in the case of the murder of Chemistry Institute director Janko Jamnik got under way as the Ljubljana District Court heard on Tuesday the testimonies by relatives of Jamnik and his alleged killer Milko Novič, a former employee of the institute.

Jamnik was gunned down in December 2014 and died three days later. Novič was soon arrested as the main suspect and sentenced to 25 years in prison last year.

The conviction, largely based on circumstantial evidence, was upheld by the Ljubljana Higher Court last December, but the Supreme Court found this year that Novič's right to defence had been violated, suspended Novič's prison sentence and ordered a retrial.

Related: Murder Mystery at the Institute of Chemistry

Novič, who spent nearly four years in detention, will now attend the court dates from his home.

Today, the panel of judges presided over by judge Zvezdan Radonjič heard the testimonies by Jamnik's wife and parents and by Novič's daughter and wife.

The witnesses mostly repeated their testimonies from the first trial, recounting Jamnik's last days and Novič's whereabouts on the night of the shooting. The testimony of Novič's wife was closed to the public.

Related: Chemistry Institute Murder Saga Continues

The panel of judges will hear forensic experts Franc Sablič, whom the defence wanted the court to exclude from the trial but failed, and Ester Ceket, as well as Miran Čeh of the Jožef Stefan Institute and a witness for the defence, Croatian ballistics and forensic expert Vojin Maštruk.

In the continuation of the retrial, the court will try to obtain location data for Novič's phone on the night of the murder from Google. Further hearings are scheduled for January and February.

STA, 14 December 2018 - Researchers at the Chemistry Institute have found a faster way to regulate the functioning of human cells, reducing their reaction to an external signal from hours to minutes. Their research has been presented in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

"Although we still do not understand the functioning of our cells completely, we can alter them to make them respond to select signals from the environment, which is very important, especially for the use of cells in medical treatments.

"Finding new ways of cell manipulation is an important branch of synthetic biology. In the last decade, scientists have managed to introduce new ways for manipulating cells but the cells' slow responsiveness was a significant restraint," the institute said in today's press release.

The institute's researchers have managed to achieve a cell's fast response to input signals, reducing its reaction time from hours to only a few minutes.

They achieved this with precisely monitored protein interactions and their post-translational modifications.

Thus, they avoided slow processes while preserving the ability of parallel and consecutive processing of information and forming logical circuits in cells.

The mechanism resembles natural processes such as blood coagulation and should be useful for diverse medical and non-medical applications.

The project, whose presentation is available at https://rdcu.be/bdbGi, started as a student team project for a 2016 science competition.

Only weeks before the publication of the Slovenian research, a similar project by a group of scientists from the US university of Caltech was presented in Science.

According to Jan Lonzarić, a co-author of the article, this is a confirmation that a "significant problem has been broached" and that "we've found a robust solution".

Roman Jerala, the mentor of the group of students that started the project, added that due to the difference in the mechanisms of the systems, the Slovenian system was faster and allowed for wider usage in different cell types.

This is the third article by researchers of the institute's synthetic biology department published in a Nature journal in a month, which is very rare even among the best teams of researchers in the world, the institute said.

The research was financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency.

November 23, 2018

If you’re looking for a fun activity for the upcoming weeks of cold and darkness, how about this one: turn your kitchen into a research lab and figure out the best way of bringing Jerusalem artichoke and/or cherry plum to a plate.

The EU sponsored project is called Alien Plant Species / from harmful to useful with citizen-led activities, in Slovenia it is being carried out in cooperation with the Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana city government and Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering and it includes a competition for the most innovative dish made with Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus, also sunroot, sunchoke, or earth apple) and/or cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera, also myrabalan plum). Contestants are free to choose other ingredients as they like.

You have about a year to figure out your recipe, as you must send this, along with a picture of the dish, to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. before September 30, 2019.

The winning authors will receive a plaque and their recipes will be presented at a festival on the use of invasive alien plant species in October 2019, where with any luck they’ll be standing alongside Ana Roš or some other Slovenian celebrity chef.

STA, 29 October - After the Supreme Court suspended the 25-year prison sentence for Milko Novič in relation to the death of Chemistry Institute director Janko Jamnik and upheld his appeal on a point of law in mid-September, his lawyer announced on Monday that the court had quashed the relevant rulings of the first and second instance courts and ordered a retrial. 

STA, 11 September 2018 - The Supreme Court has found that Milko Novič's right to defence in his trial for the 2014 murder of Chemistry Institute boss Janko Jamnik was violated, suspending his 25-year prison sentence. 

Novič files a lawsuit against the ballistics expert, Stephan refuses to enter a guilty or not guilty plea.