CLERGY ON TRIAL IN BULGARIA MAKE CONFESSIONS

Grey River Argus, 28 February 1949, Page 5

CLERGY ON TRIAL IN BULGARIA MAKE CONFESSIONS

Pitiful Spectacles Presented by Witnesses (Rec. 9.50). SOFIA .February 26. The trial of fifteen church leaders in Bulgaria was continued to-day. Rev. Yanko Nikolov Ivanov, the Superintendent of the Methodist Church in Bulgaria, confessed in the Court that he had collected information on political, economic and military affairs for the British and the Americans. Rev. Ivanov and fourteen other prominent Bulgarian priests are accused of espionage, of treason, and black-marketing.

Rev. Ivanov prefaced his confession with: “Don’t believe in man because when he is in trouble he frequently lies! I wi now confess my crimes. I will tell you that 1 am a criminal and a sinner”.

Rev. Ivanov said that he had toured the country several times, collecting information, which he had passed on to Miss Melany Turner, the Principal of an American school in Bulgaria, and, later, to her successor, Miss Helen Cooper. He had received about two million leva (about - ten thousand sterling) from Miss Turner. In 1946, he said, he made a report on the Bulgarian political situation to the World Council of Churches.

He said: “I pointed out an error made by the British and the Americans on September 3, 1944, when they did not occupy Bulgaria”.

Rev. Ivanov said that he had rejected Communism from the beginning, but, after his arrest, he had had a chance to lift the curtain —to see enlightenment. The Rev. Vassil Zyapkov, who heads the list of the Bulgarian priests who are accused of espionage and of treason, told the Court that he admitted the charges.

He repeated, almost verbatim, a written confession contained in a Government Yellow Book. The Rev. Zyapkov said that, after he had studied in England and the United States, he had returned to Bulgaria very pro-English and proAmerican. He began his espionage activities .in 1932. Rev. Zyapkov attacked the World Council of Churches, claiming that it had been converted into an agency of American capitalism merely to fight Communism. He continued: "Now I realise that I have been in the service of great enemies of my country. These enemies could not abide a flourishing Bulgaria alongside a Greece that is torn by disorder”. Another Bulgarian pastor, Nikola Naumov, President of the Supreme Council of the United Evangelical Churches of Bulgaria, with tears streaming down his face, repeatedly paid tribute to the Communist State, renounced his previous beliefs, and asked for a chance to work as an honest man. He pleaded guilty to all charges, and for several hours spilled forth a stream of repentant confession. He wept with emotion .when reviewing his past alleged activities against the State. He said Mr Cyril Black, secretary of the United States political mission in Bulgaria before the peace treaty, and now a Princeton University professor, asked him to take him information on military factories. Mr Black requested information on the people’s attitude towards the Communists and other political economic data. Confessing that he had supplied this information, Naumov blamed Mr Black, describing the American 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 is alleged to have collected information. He declared that he was won over “by the good behaviour of the security officials”. The second defendant, Pastor Yanko Nikolov Ivanov, supervisor of the Methodist Church, pleaded guilty.