site.btaEuropean Arrest Warrants Reissued for Six Russians Charged with Terrorism over Blasts of Bulgarian Ammo Depots

European Arrest Warrants (EAWs) have been reissued by the Bulgarian prosecution service for six Russian nationals charged with terrorism, the prosecution service said in a press release on Tuesday.

The issuing of the warrants has been authorized by the Sofia City Court.

The six have been investigated since April 22, 2021 in connection with four explosions carried out between 2011 and 2022 in ammunition depots located in Bulgaria. The press release added that the Russian nationals used false identities. Media reports have alleged that they are GRU agents. 

EAWs have already been issued for the same individuals, but following a legislative amendment in 2023, the procedure had to be approved by the court. Detention for up to 72 hours has been ordered for the accused, who are at large. 

The Sofia City Court found that vigorous and comprehensive work had been carried out over the last three years to gather evidence in the case. "Procedural investigative steps and operational detection have been launched to check suspencions of activity of Bulgarian citizens and complicity to this criminal activity," the prosecution service said.

On appeal, the Sofia Appellate Court upheld the ruling of the lower court and unblocked the issuance of the EAWs.

On April 28, 2021, the prosecution service said that prosecutors and investigating magistrates had found a link between four blasts at weapons and ammunition depots or manufacturing premises in Bulgarian territory. In all four cases, the destroyed products were destined for export to Georgia and Ukraine. The investigation established that six Russian nationals had been in Bulgaria at the time of the explosions.

In the first case, a warehouse owned by the EMCO company of Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev near the Lovnidol Village (North Central Bulgaria) was blown up on November 12, 2011, and a considerable amount of ammunition and explosives prepared for export to Georgia was destroyed.

In the second case, a warehouse holding finished products and an ammunition production facility of VMZ Sopot ordnance factory in the Iganovo Village (Central Bulgaria) exploded in 2015, destroying ammunition some of which was also owned by EMCO. 

In the third case, later that year, a VMZ Sopot ammunition workshop in the Iganovo Village was destroyed by a blast. In May 2015, a fire broke out at a building in Sofia, destroying physical evidence of the Iganovo warehouse blasts case, and investigators believe that this was an arson. 

In the fourth case, a detonating fuses depot belonging to the Arsenal ordnance plant of Kazanlak exploded in Maglizh (South Central Bulgaria) in 2020. 

The prosecution service and the State Agency for National Security have reason to assume that there is a connection between the blasts in Bulgaria, an attempt to poison Gebrev, his son and a company official with a nerve agent in 2015 and ''the perpetration of serious offences in the territory of foreign countries", referring to two explosions in Czechia in 2014 which, according to press reports, were presumably intended to frustrate product deliveries to Ukraine by Gebrev, whose company EMCO was using Czechia as a transit point for supplies to Ukraine.

Following the prosecutors' news conference in 2021, EMCO released a statement denying some of the facts reported. 

In the Lovnidol blast in 2011, there was no fire prior to the explosion, and the ammunitions at the depot were not destined for Georgia or anywhere else. EMCO dismissed this as a "downright lie", which can easily be proved by the available documents. EMCO also denied any connection with the Iganovo explosion. 

It suggested that prosecutors may have even been trying to cover up the Russian special services' operation in Bulgaria for years and asked what the reason for that may possibly be.