the JBTZ affair and triggered mass protests against the government, and accelerated the process of democratization, known as the Slovenian Spring. The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights was formed following Janša's arrest, which became the largest grassroots civil society organization in Slovenia, gaining over 100,000 members within weeks. Janša later accused Milan Kučan, the then-leader of SR Slovenia, of having accepted the Yugoslav Army's request for the arrest. Kučan, under pressure from the Yugoslav federal authorities, did in fact acquiesce to the searches that led to the subsequent arrests. Niko Kavčič, who was at that time considered Janša's political mentor, believed the arrest was organized by the hardliners within the Slovenian Communist Party who were angered by the publication of Stane Kavčič's diaries and wanted to prevent the formation of an alternative reformist movement. The philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who at the time also worked as a columnist for Mladina, suggested that Janša was arrested because of his critical articles on the Yugoslav Army, and because the army wanted to prevent his election as president of the League of the Socialist Youth of Slovenia. As a consequence of his arrest, he could not run for the position; nevertheless, the leadership of the organization decided to carry on with the elections despite Janša's arrest. In June 1988, Jožef Školč was elected as president of the League instead of Janša. As a protest against the League of the Socialist Youth of Slovenia's decision not to postpone the elections, Janša's broke all relations with the organization. Janša was released after serving about six months of sentence, and became editor-in-chief of the Slovene political weekly magazine Demokracija (Democracy) shortly after his release, a position he held until May 1990, having been elected to parliament the previous month. Political career 1990–1994: Foray into politics, Minister of Defence In 1989, Janša was involved in the founding of one of the first opposition parties in Slovenia, the Slovenian Democratic Union (SDZ) and became its first vice-president, and later president of the Party Council. Following the first free elections in May 1990 he became the Minister of Defence in Lojze Peterle's cabinet, a position he held during the Slovenian war for independence in June and July 1991. Together with the Minister of Interior Igor Bavčar, Janša was the main organizer of Slovenia's strategy against the Yugoslav People's Army. In 1992, when the Slovenian Democratic Union broke into