Bulgaria arrests man linked to Paris terrorist brothers

January 13, 2015 By administrator

Bulgarian authorities said Tuesday, Jan 13, they have arrested a French citizen believed to have links to one of the Kouachi brothers, while in Paris President Francois Hollande led an homage to three slain police officers, the Associated Press reports.

Fritz-Joly Joachin, 29, was arrested under two European arrest warrants, one citing his alleged links to a terrorist organization, and a second for allegedly kidnapping his 3-year-old son and smuggling him out of the country, said Darina Slavova, regional prosecutor of the southern province of Haskovo.

Speaking on the private Nova TV channel, Slavova said the first warrant cited his possible association with one of the attackers, Cherif Kouachi.

In Paris ceremony, Hollande went first to the family of Ahmed Merabet, the French Muslim policeman killed in the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo. The satirical newspaper lampooned religions and had been threatened repeatedly for its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

French police said as many as six members of a terrorist cell involved in the Paris attacks may still be at large, including a man who was seen driving a car registered to the widow of one of the gunmen.

The country has deployed 10,000 troops to protect sensitive sites — including Jewish schools and neighborhoods — in the wake of the attacks that killed 17 people last week.

Brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi and their friend, Amedy Coulibaly, were killed Friday by police after a murderous spree at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket. The three all claimed ties to Islamic extremists in the Middle East.

Two police officials told the AP that authorities were searching the Paris area for the Mini Cooper registered to Hayat Boumeddiene, Coulibaly’s widow. Turkish officials say she is now in Syria.

One of the police officials said the cell consisted of about 10 members, and that “five or six could still be at large,” but he did not provide their names. The other official said the cell was made up of about eight people and included Boumeddiene.

One of the police officials also said Coulibaly apparently set off a car bomb Thursday in the town of Villejuif, but no one was injured and it did not receive significant media attention at the time.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the manhunt is urgent because “the threat is still present.”

Bulgaria ready to issue South Stream permits

December 19, 2014 By administrator

Bulgaria is ready to issue all the necessary permits for the construction of the South Stream pipeline, according to Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. He said it will up to Gazprom whether the pipeline is built or not.

Borisov said he has the full support and understanding of the European Union and that Bulgaria is not in the wrong and should not suffer financial consequences for stopping the project, the Bulgarian news agency BGNES reports.

Bulgaria was set to reap $600 million per year in transit fees, and investment on the Buglarian side was estimated at 3.5-4 billion euros.

Russia was originally planning to build a pipeline to Southern Europe to directly export gas, but EU legislation was used to continually delay the project. On December 1 during a visit to Turkey, Putin announced the pipeline would run through Turkey to Greece, instead of Bulgaria as originally proposed.

“Thus, our country is now able to fulfill its obligations on the preparatory activities, particularly for the offshore part of the pipeline, and to issue a building permit,” Borisov said.

The Prime Minister added that, “if Gazprom stops the project, despite the permits, it will be considered guilty and not Bulgaria.”

A Bulgarian government delegation reportedly planned to fly to Moscow this week to clarify the situation over South Stream construction.

Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak and the Energy Minister of Bulgaria Temenujka Petkova are expected to hold telephone talks on South Stream Friday.

On December 1 Russian President Vladimir Putin and head of Gazprom Aleksey Miller said Russia was calling off construction of South Stream because the EU had impeded the project. Instead, Russia and Turkey agreed on a new pipeline to Turkey via the Black Sea with the annual capacity of 63 billion cubic meters.

Countries involved in the project reacted immediately, saying they would suffer multibillion dollar losses. Bulgaria has been maintaining it considered the project operational and was waiting for official notification South Stream is cancelled.

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic repeated Friday he was deeply disappointed about Russia’s decision.

“This is a project in which all of us are invested together in economic and energy terms. Serbia needs this project as it guarantees energy security for the country,” Dacic said during a meeting with Russian FM Sergei Lavrov.

Bulgarian Politicians Don’t Believe South Stream Is Over

December 3, 2014 By administrator

“We should concentrate and look into this, and if the project is as profitable as EUR 400 M a year, we should save it.”

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borisov made this comment on South Stream ahead of debates in Parliament in which MPs were supposed to come up with Bulgaria’s position on the project. Borisov voiced his message to political parties just less than forty-eight hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin had said Moscow was renouncing South Stream and Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller had declared the project “closed” as his final word.

Within that time, there has been no certainty whether Putin and Miller were serious. Putin undoubtedly left enough room for speculation by making his declaration exactly a fortnight before off-shore construction was scheduled to kick off and just two days after EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are set to meet in Basel – and it is hard to believe the two will spend all their minutes on Ukraine. What is more, experts are clearly divided over “South Stream 2.0″, with some calling it a “bluff” or “economically unfeasible” and others saying it will leave Bulgaria’s energy sector in tatters, dashing the country’s “last hope” to have “security in energy supplies.”

Bulgarian citizens, either welcoming the decision with a sigh of relief or voicing their fears about “what will happen to Bulgaria now,” are also divided over the demise of South Stream. But politicians are definitely not.

This statement certainly goes for Borisov who, alongside his economy and energy ministers, already warned they had received neither a prior notification nor any official document as a follow-up to Putin’s strong-worded remarks. The Prime Minister is to meet EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels on Thursday clearly intending to place a single demand: Europe needs a solution, and it better be quick. Borisov, who during his first tenure ditched two high-profile (albeit not that “international”) Russian projects, namely Burgas-Alexandroupoli and Belene NPP, is unusually careful with his wording about South Stream. His hopes are enforced by the Commission’s own cautious approach and its plans to hold talks with “ex-South Stream” states regardless of whether the project will actually be carried out.

Then there is, just as undoubtedly, the socialist opposition, with both center-left BSP and left-wing ABV crying foul over the project which both had described as core points for their election platforms. ABV even blamed GERB for failing to support their position in what had to be the joint declaration of Bulgaria’s legislature.

But socialists are forgetting a detail: it was a Prime Minister in a BSP-led government who froze the project. At that time they had been trying to propagate a hypothesis that putting South Stream to a halt meant it would never be carried out – the same Putin was obviously making use of while delivering his statement.

This might have been why they almost failed to notice that both GERB and right-wing Reformist Bloc, somewhat hawkish about relations with Russia, actually supported South Stream within their platforms, “but only if conformed to EU rules.”

Though the RB argued on Thursday the project might really be over, their first public reaction was to call Putin’s move a “bluff”.

It looks like nobody really wants to be against South Stream. Neither do lawmakers suggest Bulgaria has no use of that project, even though those who could have used such rhetoric to enforce trust of their pro-Western supporters (such as RB).

The deadlock reached in Wednesday’s debate in Parliament therefore tells little of the tacit agreement among Bulgarian politicians that: 1) Europe should come up with a solution; 2) Putin is rather less serious about halting South Stream than about offering the EU a a customs union, as he did again in November.

– See more at: http://www.novinite.com/articles/165188/Bulgarian+Politicians+Don%27t+Believe+South+Stream+Is+Over#sthash.gPCokH74.dpuf

Bulgaria charges radical imam, six others with supporting Islamic State

November 27, 2014 By administrator

By Angel Krasimirov

Ahmed Mussa sits inside a court as 12 Bulgarian men, most of them Muslim prayer leaders, and one woman are charged for preaching radical Islam, in Pazardzhik March 19, 2014.

(Reuters) – A Bulgarian imam and six others detained during a special operation by security forces earlier this week have been charged with supporting the ultra-radical militant group Islamic State, Bulgarian prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Charges against Muslim prayer leader Ahmed Mussa, five men and one woman include propagating an anti-democratic ideology and incitement to war, both verbally and with videos and images, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Borislav Sarafov said.

Islamic State, who control territory in Iraq and Syria, have carried out brutal killings of civilians, including highly publicized beheadings of foreign journalists and aid workers. The group has been targeted by U.S.-led air strikes.

Ahmed Mussa sits inside a court as 12 Bulgarian men, most of them Muslim prayer leaders, and one woman are charged for preaching radical Islam, in Pazardzhik March 19, 2014.

Western governments fear their own citizens who have joined the group to fight could return and carry out attacks at home.

Bulgarian security forces raided more than 40 homes and a mosque in southern Bulgaria on Tuesday to seize books and computers in a special operation aimed at uncovering radical Islamist activities.

Some 26 people were held for 24 hours and 30 witnesses were questioned during the operation, conducted by more than 400 police officers, security agents, prosecutors and investigators.

“(Mussa) is an intelligent man, so he has accepted the prosecutors’ decision and he has not expressed indignation regarding his detention,” Elvira Pankova, Mussa’s lawyer, told reporters.

Investigators discovered a large number of shirts, hats, flags and banners with the logo of the Islamic State.

Sarafov said that Mussa, a former Christian of Roma origin who converted to Islam in 2000 while working in Vienna, had preached surrounded by the Islamic State flags.

The imam had told his followers to be prepared to fight against Christianity to achieve the ultimate goal of establishing a global caliphate, according to Sarafov.

He also said Mussa’s group had attempted to recruit fighters for Islamic State and that the crimes in question were committed between July 2014 and November 2014.

Mussa was sentenced to a year in jail for spreading radical Islam last March in a case seen as a test for the delicate relations between the country’s minority Muslims and Orthodox Christian majority. He was freed pending an appeal.

Bulgaria is supporting a coalition to fight Islamic State but has not taken an active military role.

Bulgaria is a rare European Union country where Muslims are not recent immigrants but a centuries-old community, mostly ethnic Turkish descendants of Ottoman rule that ended in 1878.

They make up about 12 percent of the 7.3 million population.

Armenia and Bulgaria sign military partnership plan for 2015

November 27, 2014 By administrator

YEREVAN. – Bilateral consultations on the military-political and military cooperation between Armenia and Bulgaria were conducted Thursday in the Ministry of Defense of Armenia, Armenian News – NEWS.am reports.

According to the press service of Armenian MOD, representatives of Defense Policy Department of Armenian Defense Ministry and representatives of Defense Policy Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Bulgaria participated in consultations. The delegation of the Ministry of Defense of Bulgaria headed by the Defense Policy Directorate Chief Iveta Dimitrova has also met with the Armenian First Deputy Defense Minister David Tonoyan.

Following the consultations, Iveta Dimitrova and her Armenian counterpart, MOD Defense Policy Department Head Levon Ayvazyan signed the Armenian-Bulgarian bilateral military partnership plan for 2015.

Bulgaria votes in snap parliamentary election

October 5, 2014 By administrator

Bulgarians are voting in a snap election, following the resignation of a Socialist-led government in July, the BBC reports.

Opinion polls suggest the centre-right GERB party may win most of the votes but fall short of an overall majority in the 240-seat parliament.

Its main rivals are the Socialists (BSP) and the ethnic-Turkish DPS party.

Bulgaria – the poorest country in the European Union – has been rocked by recent protests over low living standards and by a banking crisis.

GERB, led by former PM Boiko Borisov is predicted to win the polls, but is likely to rely on smaller parties to be able to form a governing coalition.

“Right now I don’t see how and with whom to form a government,” Mr Borisov was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency earlier this week.

The splits in the Socialist-led government of now ex-PM Plamen Oresharski began to appear after the party’s disastrous showing in the European Parliament elections in May.

However, the rift with DPS, the former junior partner in the coalition, was seen as the main reason for the cabinet’s resignation.

A controversy around the South Stream pipeline, meant to carry Russian gas to Western Europe via Bulgaria, also played a big part in the government’s downfall.

Mr Oresharski was criticised for moving ahead with construction of the pipeline, a project frowned upon by Brussels for breaching EU rules.

In June, shortly after the announcement that Bulgaria had stopped work on the project, the country witnessed a run on two of the country’s largest banks that also heightened political uncertainty.

One of them, the Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB), was closed after panicked customers withdrew millions on their deposits.

Bulgaria, along with Armenia, was on the verge of disappearing from Turkish schoolbooks

May 12, 2014 By administrator

Territories in Bulgaria (and other countries) are Turkey’s “living history in Europe” – Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Turkey is not in the EU, but is both a member candidate and a democracy holding regular elections. In December 2013, months ahead of a crucial vote, the country’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said while campaigning in North-Western Turkey, close to borders with Bulgaria and Greece:

“Thrace is Thessaloniki but at the same time it is Komotini and Xanthi. It is also Kardzhali [in Bulgaria] and the Vardar River. Going further back, it is Skopje, Pristina and Sarajevo… Thrace is our living history in Europe… our representative in this geographic region.”

What Bulgaria did was to advise Turkish politicians to handle carefully interpretations connected with the Balkan past as such statements did not encourage “good neighborly relations”.

Erdogan’s remarks in December were however nothing compared to 2012’s blunder, when Bulgaria, along with Armenia, was on the verge of disappearing from Turkish schoolbooks – and therefore also from Turkish pupils’ heads. In the multimedia, apart from regions in Greece, Iraq, Cyprus and Georgia, the entire Bulgarian and Armenian territories were missing, as they were part of Turkey.

The Ministry of Education in Ankara officially apologized. We should only hope Turkey will react in the same positive manner if Bulgaria prints a map involving lands near the Straits or Greece does the same with the territories of Byzantine Empire… by mistake.

Source: novinite.com

Bulgarian Nationalists to Stage Anti-NATO Protest

April 12, 2014 By administrator

Bulgaria’s ultra-nationalist Ataka party is organizing an anti-NATO protest in Sofia on Friday, 11 AM.

The demonstration will be held at the square in front of the Presidency building, where President Rosen Plevneliev will be meeting with NATO‘s Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Plevneliev will award Rasmussen with the Stara Planina Order.

“Our position has always been against Bulgaria’s active participation in NATO. We believe this visit’s motives are unclear, and seeks to bring us into an unnecessary conflict”, Ataka MP Vencislav Lakov commented.

Rasmussen is visiting Bulgaria in connection to the country’s 10th anniversary since joining NATO. He is meeting with PM Plamen Oresharski and President Rosen Plevneliev.

Thursday evening, another small anti-NATO protest was held in the center of Sofia, by a group of far-left youths.

– See more at: http://www.novinite.com/articles/159729/Bulgarian+Nationalists+to+Stage+Anti-NATO+Protest#sthash.AthIwM2w.dpuf

Bulgaria, Serbia pull out of Eurovision 2014 over financial constraints

November 25, 2013 By administrator

November 23, 2013 – 14:29 AMT

Bulgaria and Serbia have pulled out of next year’s Eurovision Song Contest because they cannot afford it, Sky News reported.

The countries have joined a list of former contestants who have withdrawn from the contest in Copenhagen due to economic hardship.

Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Andorra have also decided not to participate.

Bulgarian National Television (BNT) said the cost of taking part in the contest -including the entry fee and special effects – had grown steadily since 2005.

“Given the cost of this project and pending budget cuts next year, BNT decided to withdraw from Eurovision Song Contest as a first step in the financial constraints the television will have to take,” a BNT statement, in the Sophia Globe, said.

Meanwhile media in Serbia reported a statement by the Serbian Broadcasting Corporation announcing its withdrawal.

“The continuity of participation of Serbia in the Eurovision Song Contest is terminated due to financial reasons,” the statement read.

Although Bulgaria has competed in the contest since 2005, it has rarely reached the final stage. Its best position was in 2007, when drumming duo Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankulov came fifth with their song Voda.

Serbia won the contest in 2007 with it debut entry – the ballad Molitva by Marija Šerifović. Serbia did not qualify for the contest in 2013.

Last year’s winner was Denmark’s Emmelie de Forest with the song Teardrops. The performance was watched by an estimated international audience of 125 million people.

The contest has been broadcast every year since 1956 and is one of the longest-running television programmes in the world.

Bulgarian Nationalists Boycott Turkish Defense Minister Visit

November 16, 2012 By administrator

November 16, 2012, Friday By: novinite.com

Bulgaria‘s far-right, nationalist Ataka party staged a protest rally Friday against the visit of Turkish Defense Minister, Ismet Yilmaz, to Sofia.

The Turkish Minister, however, was met with honors by his Bulgarian counterpart, Anyu Angelov and three companies – from the land force, the air force and the navy. “The relations between Bulgaria and Turkey are an example of good partnership between neighbors and allies in NATO,” said Angelov during his meeting with Yilmaz. The two discussed matters of cooperation in the defense sector.

They also laid wreaths at the Unknown Soldier monument.

Meanwhile, Ataka leaders and followers were seen in the vicinity of the monument, holding signs such as “We cannot be brothers in arms with those who massacred Bulgarians for five centuries,” “Turkey Owes Us USD 10 B for Properties in Thrace,” and “Boyko, Don’t Lead Us to War with Erdogan.”

The rally was attended by Ataka leader, Volen Siderov, and Ataka Members of the Parliament, Pavel Shopov, Desisilav Choukolov, and Ventsislav Lakov.

Siderov complained of the strong police presence, saying it was a disgrace and a violation of the rights of the MPs. He reminded that every time a Turkish official is visiting Bulgaria his party was the only one to voice the truth that Turkey is indebted to Bulgaria.

“We represent the position of hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians who voted for us. There is no difference between the ruling Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party, GERB, and the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, DPS. Both work not for Bulgarian, but for Turkish interests,” the nationalist leader concluded.