site.btaJanuary 31, 1991: Bulgarian Prosecution Service Opens Case on Forcible Assimilation of Ethnic Turks under Communism

On January 31, 1991, the Bulgarian prosecution service opened a case on a large-scale campaign for forcible assimilation of ethnic Turks by the communist regime in the 1980s.

Initially, charges were brought against Todor Zhivkov (Chairman of the State Council and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party), Dimitar Stoyanov (Interior Minister), and Georgi Atanasov (Prime Minister), as well as Petar Mladenov and Pencho Kubadinski, under Article 162, Paragraph 1 of the Penal Code (for incitement to racial hatred) and Article 387, Paragraph 2 (for abuse of power).

In 1994, the charges against Mladenov and Kubadinski were dropped, while Zhivkov, Stoyanov, and Atanasov remained liable only under Article 387, Paragraph 2. The case was submitted to the court in 1993 and was first returned in 1994.

In 1999, the charges against Georgi Atanasov were dismissed by the Sofia Military District Prosecutor's Office due to lack of evidence but were reopened on January 3, 2001. On January 5, 2001, the military appellate prosecutor refused to confirm the dismissal of the charges against Georgi Atanasov and sent the case back for further proceedings. By that time Todor Zhivkov and Dimitar Stoyanov had passed away.