TRIAL BEGUN IN SOFIA

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25740, 28 February 1949, Page 7

TRIAL BEGUN IN SOFIA

PASTORS ACCUSED OF TREASON THREE ADMIT GUILT IN COURT (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9.30 p.m.) SOFIA, February 26. Yanko Nikolov Ivanov, superintendent of the Methodist Church in Bulgaria. to-day confessed in court that he had collected information on political. economic, and military affairs for Britons and Americans. Ivanov and 14 other prominent Bulgarian oriests are accused of espionage, treason. and black marketing. Ivanov eaid'that he had toured the country several times collecting information which had been passed on to Miss Melany Turner, principal of an American school in Bulgaria, and later to her successor. Miss Helen Cooper. He said that he had received about £lO,OOO from Miss Turner. In 1946 he had reported on the Bulgarian political situation to the World Council of Churches. “I pointed out the error made by the British and Americans on September 3, 1944, when they did not occupy Bulgaria.” Ivanov said that he had rejected Communism from the beginning but that after his arrest he had had a chance >to lift up the curtain —to see enlightenment. Vassil Ziapkov, who heads the list of Bulgarian priests accused of espionage and treason, told the court that he admitted the charges. He repeated almost verbatim the written confession contained in the Government Yellow Book. Ziapkov said that after studying in England and the United States he nad returned to Bulgaria very pro-English and pro-American. He said that his espionage activities had begun in 1932. Ziapkov attacked the World Council of Churches, claiming that it had been converted into an agency of American capitalism merely to fight Communism. “Now I realise that I have been in the service of great enemies of my country,” he added. “These enemies could not abide a flourishing Bulgaria alongside a Greece torn by disorder.” Hearing on Friday With tears streaming down his cheeks and his voice cracking, Nikola Naumov, president of the Supreme Council of the United Evangelical Churches of Bulgaria, repeatedly paid tribute to the Communist State, renounced his previous beliefs, and asked for a chance to work as an honest man, when he appeared in court yesterday.

Naumov was the first to be called. He pleaded guilty to all charges and for several hours spilled forth a stream of repenant confession. He said that Mr Cyril Black, secretary of the United States Political Mission in Bulgaria before the peace treaty, and now a Princeton University professor, had asked him to take him information on military factories. On another occasion, he said, Mr Black had sought information on the people’s attitude towards the Communists and other political and economic information. Confessing that he had supplied this information, Naumov described Mr Black as “a very sly man, and a man who knows how to listen.” Naumov mentioned Mr Rockefeller, Mr Ford, and other wealthy Americans as being behind the Church organisations for which he said he had collected information. He declared that he had been “won over by the good behaviour of the security officials.” Among the 300 spectators in the courtroom before the proceedings began were 25 representatives of foreign newspapers and observers from the British and United States Legations.