SOFIA POLICE METHODS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 120, 6 March 1950, Page 3

SOFIA POLICE METHODS.

ACCOUNT GIVEN IN WASHINGTON INTERROGATION OF “SPY” (N.Z.P. A.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, March 4. The State Department to-day described how the Bulgarian Communist militia forced a Bulgarian employee of the United States , Legation in Sofia to describe a British general as the head of Western intelligence activities in Bulgaria. The employee was JMr Michael Shipkov, whom Bulgarian police arrested in August, 1949, for alleged spying.

The State Department said that after Mr Shipkov “confessed” his part in British and American espionage, the Bulgarian militia released him on condition that he served as an informer for them at the United States Legation Mr Shipkov sought asylum in the legation, where he wrote an affidavit telling how the militia forced a confession from him. The Bulgarian militia later arrested Mr Shipkov again. The State Department to-day published Mr Shipkov’s affidavit. It gave a vivid account of how he was tortured mentally and physically and forced to 'confess to espionage and treason. It described how militiamen beat him. The affidavit said that the confession the Bulgarians secured from him was false and “was dragged out of me against my will, against any knowledge of the actual truth, and under duress.” The affidavit said that the cruelty of the militia was aimed at his “mental degradation.” The militia, in an interrogation lasting 32 hours, foiced him to tell them “exactly words that fitted their theory—that the British were master minds of all systems of espionage.” Mr Shipkov said that the militia forced him to agree that the British General Oxley was the. head of Western intelligence activities in Bulgaria in 1945-46. * Seven militiamen, working in teams, questioned him. The only interruptions came during his periodic collapses from exhaustion. He was forced to stand facing a wall, bent forward with one finger on each hand pressing against the wall. He was slapped or struck on the back of the neck when his answers were unsatisfactory. A State Department spokesman said that the department was greatly distressed over Mr Shipkov’s possible fate since his second arrest. . “He added: “The pattern of Mr Shipkov’s confession has become tragically familiar, while the method of how such confessions are extorted has remained an enigma. For the first time, however, a victim of this apparently hypnotic process has had the spiritual fortitude and courage painfully to piece together again tl?e, shattered pieces of his moral character and toreveal in detail how a man of integrity can be completed broken and forced to describe in his own words a fantastic story of imaginary crimes of espionage and treason.”