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IT CANNOT ALL BE TRUE

  • On 25.04.2005 Bulgaria signed its Accession treaty with EU effective as of 01.01.2007. The rulers’ ecstasy by the smell of coming funds and the curious hope of the ruled subjects somehow relieved the wound that was refreshed earlier that month about a “Bulgarian trace” in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981.
  • The ghost of the “Bulgarian trace” in the papal assassination prompts a balance of the international crimes in which Bulgaria was implicated in the last 100 years:

1. 1933 February- setting fire on the German parliament (the Reichstag). Three Bulgarians indicted, within Leipzig court hearings indictment withdrawn and Bulgarians released in spite of Nazi fury. A Dutch anarchist Van der Lube convicted and hanged.

2. 1973- the chairman of the Italian communist party Enrico Berlinguer on his way to Sofia airport runs into a truck. His driver dies, Berlinguer survives. A recent Italian book alleges Berlinguer was the target of an assassination attempt because of his disagreements with Moscow-Sofia.

3. 1978- on London’s Waterloo bridge was killed George Markov- a Bulgarian anti-communist writer, defector and BBC journalist. It was almost taken for granted that murder was done by Bulgarian communist secret service. 15 years after communist collapse in Bulgaria- a NATO and almost a EU country- no specific suspect, no indictment and no conviction for that crime. What is still the problem ?

4. 1981- assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. The accused Bulgarian Sergey Antonov was acquitted by the Italian court on allegations for organizing the plot on behalf of Bulgarian secret police. Yet the stigma on the nation survives the acquittal.

5. 1997-1999 six Bulgarian nurses and a doctor accused and for allegedly infecting with AIDS hundreds of Libyan children. Death sentence by first instance court in spite of top international experts report that Bulgarians were innocent. Appeal pending.

6. 2003, 11.03 – the Madrid bombings. A Bulgarian is suspected to have lived together with the main terrorist allegedly supplying him with mobile telephones. Only media reports, no legal action.

7. 2004 – Bulgarian gypsies sell their new-born babies in Italy and Greece. The media volcano avoids the question which civilization and why produced the buyers of babies. Why are civilized women forced to build up a career till the age of 40 when their only motherhood chance remains a baby purchase ?

8. 1995-2002 International media reports for Bulgarian breaches of the embargo against Saddam Hussein. No legal cases.

9. 2004 August – the president of Bulgarian Olympic committee Mr. Ivan Slavkov was suspended and recommended for expulsion from IOC due to videotaped corruptive negotiations without having taken any money. No legal case- local or international. But Bulgaria becomes the home of Olympic corruption for the world TV viewers who saw the videotape.

10. 2005 spring – media reports for IRA attempts to launder money through Bulgaria by fictitious investments. Nothing specific, no legal case.

11. May 2005 : Georgian media allege that Bulgarians were involved in the assassination attempt (throwing a grenade) at the Tbilisi square where US president George W. Bush was about to give a speech in May 2005. Foreign and Interior ministries of Georgia offer apologies to Bg government for those crazy allegations. Yet the inertia speaks for itself.

12. In April 1993 the then Turkish president Turgut Yuzal died suddenly of a heart attack. It happened in the evening of April 16th a few hours after he visited the exhibition opening in Istanbul of a Bulgarian sculptor Mr. Vejdi Rashidov. Mr. Yuzal’s widow maintained at the time and recently repeated her claim that the heart attack was related to a lemonade he drank at the Bulgarian exhibition reception- an allegation never shared by official Turkish sources. Yet the story resurfaced in April 2006 in Turkish media prompting bitter Sofia comments that after a Bulgarian Umbrella we have a Bulgarian Lemonade.

  • This list creates the impression that on international scale Bulgaria is being used as a testing ground for mud-firing. Bulgaria is the universal international demon on duty to automatically absorb almost any allegation and in some cases is a convenient diversion from the true trace. All those cases cannot be coinciding accidents of media and legal mistakes. They would not have been possible if Bulgarian rulers were personalities and not stocks- with no dignity but with a price. On Europe’s doorstep Bulgaria should say farewell to their miserably low moral taking spitting for a summer rain.
  • Anybody who keeps on chewing “a Bulgarian trace” should first answer the question whose trace is Yalta 1945 when Bulgaria was donated for 50 years to the Stalinist tiger for the sake of saving other states- active Nazi allies. And this shortly after 1943 when Bulgaria saved its Jews from deportation to the Death camps- its reward was Yalta. Though a formal Nazi ally Bulgaria sent NO armies to any front to fight allied forces. Yet the best non-German volunteer SS divisions came from west European nations which after the war got the Marshall plan. Bulgaria got Stalin !
  • The “Bulgarian trace” hunters are hardly interested in the fact that Bulgaria is the home of the world oldest gold treasure (5000 years before Christ) and that the registered patent for the first computer belongs to a Bulgarian – John Atanassov.
  • So far as the above listed cases are concerned, the message is simple: Instead of allegations let specific justice triumph even if the world should perish.

May 2005

Braykov’s Legal Office