site.btaSocialist Party Demands Interior Minister's, Deputy PM's Resignation

Sofia, October 19 (BTA) - The left-wing BSP for Bulgaria parliamentary group demanded the resignations of Interior Minister Valentin Radev and Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Simeonov following Wednesday's government decision to designate the fence along the Bulgarian-Turkish border a site of strategic importance to national security.

Floor leader and Socialist Party leader Kornelia Ninova stated in Parliament on Thursday that two days ago border police officers stopped investigating journalist and Socialist MP Elena Yoncheva and cut off her access to an open Bulgarian territory. After the cabinet's decision on Wednesday, her visit there could be viewed as a threat of disclosure of national security secrets. Ninova also said that as of that day, Boyko Borissov's government considers the fight against corruption a crime.

Ninova said: "To us, the reason for making this decision in this particular manner yesterday is that for three months now Elena Yoncheva has been shooting videos, interviewing witnesses and gathering documents which implicate officials in corruption. She filmed in real time groups of illegal migrants crossing the border, and the footage shows a fallen fence, open shafts and migrants using ladders to climb over the fence or going under the fence."

"I declare on behalf of the whole parliamentary group that you cannot stop us, we will invite all European ambassadors to see the video and the documents which implicate the government in corruption, and we will ask them two things: to check how EU money is being spent and how the border is guarded," Ninova told the power-holders. "Mr Borissov, we will let you know where and when the film will be screened and we expect you to have all 80 MPs of BSP for Bulgaria arrested."

In June, Yoncheva voiced suspicions that, due to corruption, one sector of the fence along the Bulgarian-Turkish border was single-mesh rather than double-mesh. At the time, GERB floor leader Tsvetan Tsvetanov fully accounted for the 160 million euro
extended to Bulgaria by the EU for enhancing border protection.

On October 11, the prosecution service said it would not open pre-trial proceedings against Yoncheva for disclosing a state secret through footage and statements about the fence along the border with Turkey. The prosecutors decided that the information about the border fence and the adjacent infrastructure was not classified.

The cabinet put the fence along the Bulgarian-Turkish border on the list of sites of strategic importance to national security to prevent, among other things, "leaks of information on the means and methods of border protection, as well as on the operational capacity for border protection."