Emigre says he has proof of Bulgarian police death list

Press, 20 December 1978, Page 8

Emigre says he has proof of Bulgarian police death list

NZPA-Reuter Vienna A Bulgarian socialist who has lived in Austria for 30 years claims to have written proof that the Bulgarian secret police have tried to have him kidnapped or killed.

Mr Stefan Tabakoff, chairman of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party-in-exile, said he was at the top of a hit list drawn up by a suspect emigre group in West Germany on Bulgarian orders. Mr Tabakoff said a 27-year-old former Bulgarian taxi driver, now living near Freiburg, West Germany, had confessed to being offered about $5OOO for the murder. The man had backed out of the assignment and had given him a confession in

writing at. a meeting ini West Germany three weeks ago, Mr Tabakoff said. Mr Tabakoff, who is 52, called a press conference in a Vienna cafe to make his . disclosures. He said the case was linked with the myster- , ious death of Bulgarian defector, Georgi Markov, in London in September, and an attack on a Bulgarian refugee in Paris. Mr Tabakoff said the assassination attempt against him had been mas-ter-minded by another Bulgarian exile in West. Germany “who appears to be a liaison man for the Bulgarian Security Service.” The same man, now a Frnch citizen, had tried to recruit the former taxi driver for a kidnap attempt last year. Mr Tabakoff said the plan

I had been to abduct him in Vienna and take him by car to Bulgaria via Czechoslovakia, but the former taxi driver had refused this assignment also. The former taxi driver quoted the man who had given him the murder and kidnap assignments as saying: “I have a needle, and when I stick it in, he dies after a few days.” Mr Tabakoff said this statement suggested similiar means as those used to kill Markov in London and an unsuccessful attack against another Bulgarian defector, Vladimir Kostov, in Paris. Mr Markov, an anti-com-munist broadcaster, died in the belief that he had been stabbed by a poison-tipped umbrella, and the British police say they found a tiny

metal ball in his body that contained poison. The French police say a similar pellet was extracted from Mr Kostov’s back after he reported a murder attempt on the Paris Metro in August. Mr Tabakoff said he had similar many verbal and written murder threats since Markov’s death. The former taxi driver’s written confession had been referred to the West German police, Mr Tabakoff said, and the man was under police protection. Mr Tabakoff said the man who had organised the murder attempt had been ostensibly an official of a rival Bulgarian socialist emigre group, but this had been a cover for secret police activities. *