Bulgaria’s Prosecution Renewed The Arrest Warrants For Six Russian Citizens Accused of Terrorism

The Sofia City Prosecutor's Office has issued European arrest warrants for Russian citizens who are accused of terrorism in Bulgaria. The subject of the current investigation are four explosions that occurred in the period from 2011 to 2020 in ammunition warehouses on the territory of Bulgaria.

The first case, which dates back to 2011, concerns the explosion of a warehouse of the company of arms dealer Emiliyan Gebrev - "Emco" in the village of Dolni dol. The second case concerns the production of "Emco", stored by VMZ "Sopot" in a warehouse near the village of Iganovo and dates back to 2015. Then a warehouse of the state factory was also blown up. In addition, in the same year, a fire broke out in the building of the former Institute of Special Techniques in Sofia, during which evidence in the case of the explosions in Iganovo was burned. The last blast was in the weapons plant "Arsenal" near Muglizh in 2020. In all cases, there are no victims or injured.

The prosecutor's office started working on the cases only in 2021, the pre-trial proceedings in these cases were combined. Its main hypothesis was that the explosions were intentional in order to limit the exports of the arms company "Emco". The names of the suspected Russian agents match those of the two Russians accused by British authorities in absentia in 2018 of attempting to kill Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Gebrev was also the victim of an attempted poisoning in 2015, allegedly with a substance close to Novichok, or Novichok itself.

In the course of the work on the case, numerous investigative actions were carried out, European investigation orders were executed, operative-search activities were carried out by the National Security Agency. It was established that Bulgaria was visited by...