Probe into assassination threat against Bulgarian PM Borissov
Bulgaria’s security services are investigating after a threat to assassinate Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov was received at the Cabinet office in Sofia, reports on February 22 said.
The threat took the form of an envelope sent anonymously to the Cabinet office, containing a photograph of Borissov and a bullet, and a message composed from letters of the alphabet cut out from newspapers, Bulgarian National Television said.
The government media service confirmed to reporters that the death threat had been received.
Security services were questioning Cabinet administration officials who had taken receipt of the letter. The investigation was intended to establish the route of the letter through the administration.
According to local media, the security services believed that the threat was genuine and not the work of someone with mental health problems.
The news of the death threat against Borissov came on the same day that the Interior Ministry said at an unprecedented news conference that state bodyguard services had been provided to Delyan Peevski, a controversial business person and Movement for Rights and Freedoms MP, because investigators had become aware of a plot to assassinate Peevski.
Questioned by reporters shortly after 6pm about the threat, Borissov suggested that it could be linked to his government’s recent actions in calling a halt to a series of public procurements adding up to more than 1.5 billion leva, and actions against contraband smuggling.
This is not the first time that an allegation regarding a death threat against Borissov has been made public.
In February 2013, after Parliament voted to accept the resignation of his first government, Borissov said in the National Assembly that Ahmed Dogan, founder of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms and that party’s honorary president, had taken out a contract on him.
In March 2013, Prosecutor-General Sotir Tsatsarov said that the allegation that had been made by Borissov was based on unreliable information by an unidentified foreign intelligence service.
