An investigation has been launched into a suspected terrorist attack against Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev after a bomb exploded near his motorcade on Monday, according to Euractiv.
A bomb exploded near Geshev’s motorcade, making a crater in the road and overturning the armoured jeep where the chief prosecutor was travelling with his family. The explosion happened about 40 km from the Bulgarian capital.
The Director of the National Investigation Service Borislav Sarafov announced the information.
“The explosive device was placed on the side of the road at a big turn where the speed was expected to be lower. At the moment when Geshev’s car passed by the place, the bomb exploded, the pillar of fire was four to five metres high, and the hole was 30-40 cm deep. The bomb had shrapnel and was aimed at the road,” said Sarafov.
Sarafov added that someone was monitoring the routes of the chief prosecutor with the aim of murdering the prosecutor. Geshev was supposed to travel to Turkey on Monday, but at the last minute, he changed plans and attended an event for junior prosecutors.
“Everything is OK; it’s a good thing that I changed the cars at the last moment. Otherwise… it’s good that they didn’t kill someone! I’m worried about the children, they were very scared,” Geshev told the siteEpicenter.bg.
The operational chief of the Bulgarian police, Petar Todorov, announced that no one was injured in the explosion but did not once mention the word “explosion” during his speech and refused to take questions from journalists.
Over the last three years, Bulgaria has been under pressure from the EU and the US to carry out a radical reform of the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office to remove the immunity of the chief prosecutor, against whom no independent investigation can be conducted. This state of Bulgarian justice was established in 2009 by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in the case “Kolevi v. Bulgaria.”
Caretaker Prime Minister Galab Donev is calling a meeting on Tuesday, May 2, at which representatives of the special services, the police and the prosecutor’s office will summarise the information known so far.
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