Kostov: 'Galeria' Spying Case Aimed to Crush Free Bulgaria Media

The so called 'Galeria' spying case aimed to crush the free Bulgarian media, to threaten them in order to mind what they were writing.

This was announced Monday by Chair of the Parliamentary Committee for control of DANS, Ivan Kostov, in an interview for bTV.

In his words, the Galeria case was started wrongly as an informational case with the argument that there was a leak of classified information. However, nowhere is stated what kind of information was leaked and in which media it happened.

The case was started against a media circle surrounding the website “Opasnite”, to which the newspaper Weekend was close, Kostov explained. The website's popularity was very large a year and a half ago, and the newspapers issue was large, too, he added.

Galeria was started illegally, and during its development different laws were broken including interior regulations of interior security institutions, Kostov said.

According to him, the signal for the case was given by the ex-Prime Minister, Sergey Stanishev. Such a case was started after publications against the President and the PM, and the one in the Interior Ministry started after Peter Mandzhukov stated he had been slandered.

The case was started in the State Security Agency (DANS). The signatures show that the main acting person who also took the responsibility was ex-DANS head, Petko Sertov.

What was done, was not typical for democratic states, where such a dangerous force, as the state security agency, is always used against the enemies of democracy, and the media is one of democracy's guaranties, Kostov said.

It has been established that journalists were interrogated by DANS and were threatened, he added. Two people, one of which was Mladen Mutafchiyski, were forced to give written explanations. He was forced to confess that he had nothing to do with the “Dangerous” website, and he did it.

In this case, it is not clear who ordered the people to be brought for interrogation. Alexey Petrov, in whatever way took part in the case, had no right to do it, Kostov explained.