Bulgaria has appeared amid severe hostages crisis overnight when Qatar-based TV station al-Jazeera aired a video showing on the night of July 8 two Bulgarians kidnapped by Iraqi militants.
Bulgarian truck drivers Ivailo Kepov, 32, and Georgy Lazov, 30, were taken hostages near the northern Iraqi town of Mosul, reportedly on June 28 or 29, by the Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group and threatened with execution unless US troops freed Iraqi prisoners within 24 hours.
"We are in the hands of people whose actions are difficult to predict," Bulgarian government spokesperson Dimitar Tsonev said.
President Georgi Parvanov and Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg called on the kidnappers to "free the second hostage," vowing they would do "all they could" to save him.
Sofia had urged the militants to release Georgi Lazov, 30, and Ivailo Kepov, 32, who were transporting cars from Bulgaria to Mosul in northern Iraq when they disappeared on June 27.
A diplomatic mission was sent to Iraq shortly after the kidnappings in an attempt to negotiate the men's release, but the government refused to reconsider its presence in Iraq, where 485 Bulgarian soldiers have been serving under Polish command since August 2003.
Bulgaria asked for support from many of its close allies and Iraq neighbouring countries, as well as from local influential religious leaders, in its efforts to save the lives of the two Bulgarians.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy also talked to Seif al-Islam, the son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who issued a statement calling on the Iraqi insurgents to release the two Bulgarian hostages on humane, not political, grounds.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on July 10 also called for the release of the two men. In a statement, Annan's spokesperson said the UN head was "deeply concerned about the threats to the lives" of the hostages and called for their release and that of "all other innocent civilians who may have been abducted for political ends in the conflict."
On 12 July, Passy appeared live on Al Jazeera's evening news to tell the abductors that Lazov suffers from diabetes and that Kepov had had a stroke. Despite the appeal, there was no response from the kidnappers.
Four days after the deadline elapsed, on July 13 Al-Jazeera satellite television said it had received video footage of the beheading of one of the two men. Howevere the Arabic TV aired only part of it skipping some graphics, which reportedly showed the actual beheading of the Bulgarian.
It has been believed to be Lazov, 30, but his identity has been confirmed July 22 by fingerprints sent from Bulgaria.
The insurgency group had also threatened to kill the other Bulgarian hostage, within a new deadline of 24 hours, which has ended on July 14 without any news. Their claims were changed that US forces released all Iraqi female prisoners they are holding, Al-Jazeera said.
After the 13 July airing of the execution on Al Jazeera, the U.S. Embassy in Sofia called for the release of the other captive.
Bernard Bot, the president of the European Council and the Dutch foreign minister, expressed his horror at the report of the brutal murder. He reiterated the EU's condemnation of the recent acts of violence against civilians in Iraq.
In Sofia, the Council of Ambassadors and the heads of the Arab diplomatic missions to Bulgaria issued a declaration in which they expressed their solidarity with Bulgaria. The council said that it would continue to provide help, condemning the execution of Lazov as "horrible and disgusting."
Hopes to find the reportedly beheaded Bulgarian hostage alive have been drowned as Iraqi police informed about a headless body recovered from the Tigris river on the night of July 13.
The corpse dressed in an orange jumpsuit was found by Iraqi police in the Tigris river near Baiji, about 200 km north of Baghdad, and handed over to US military forces for identification and then transported to the Interior Ministry in Baghdad.
Bulgaria has sent fingerprints for facilitating the identification process and is waiting for samples to carry out DNA-analysis.
On 15 July, the head of the Mosul police, General Mohammed Khairi Barhawi, rejected reports that Iraqi police had found any bodies, saying that there was no confirmation yet about the killing of either of the two Bulgarian hostages.
However, Bulgarian officials seemed more pessimistic, also indicating that the second hostage, Ivaylo Kepov, faces slim chances of survival. The 24-hour deadline for the threatened execution of the second truck driver passed on the night of 14 July, and there has been no news about his fate.
After Foreign Ministry confirmed that matching fingerprint evidence indicate a decapitated corpse found in Iraq's Tigris river last week is that of 30-year-old Bulgarian truck driver Georgi Lazov, the body is now set to be transported to Germany to be subjected to a DNA-analysis in a NATO lab.
Iraqi police announced Thursday, July 22, about a second decapitated corpse, and the head apart placed in a plastic bag, found in the same region north of Baghdad.
The spokesperson of the Iraqi Interior Ministry told Bulgarian bTV channel that remains found north of Baghdad on July 22 were those of Kepov.
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