GENERAL "TEMPO" ACCUSED OF PART IN BULGAR PLOT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23217, 31 March 1950, Page 5

GENERAL "TEMPO" ACCUSED OF PART IN BULGAR PLOT

{lO a.m.) SOFIA, March 30. General Svetozar Vukmanovich—usually called General “Tempo”—one of Marshal Tito’s henchmen and a picturesque figure of the Yugoslav liberation, was said today to have been involved in an abortive plot to kill the Soviet officer, Marshal Klementi_ Voroshilov and Bulgarian Cabinet Ministers. The accusation was made during the trial for complicity in the plot of 26 Bulgarians and Yugoslavs. The indictment, according to the BulE' arian news agency, accuses the men of eing recruited by a “Trotskyite espionage centre in Yugoslavia” to spy on Bulgaria. They were charged with planning to bomb the Dimitrov mausoleum in September 1949 when Marshal Voroshilov pnd Bulgarian officials reviewed the piarch past. Eight of the men pleaded guilty yesterday. One of the accused, who pleaded guilty today, described General ’Tempo” as “the head of Yugoslavia's counter-espionage.” General “Tempo” has already been mentioned in two big East European trials—that of Lazio Rajk who said he met the General in a French concentration camp and that of Traicho Kostov, the former Bulgarian Deputy Premier, when two witnesses mentioned General “Tempo’s” name in connection with alleged Yugoslav plan to annex the Bulgarian and Greek parts of Macedonia.