The Dangerous News online again
On 23 September Frognews editor Ognyan Stefanov, was brutally attacked in Sofia by four men who beat him with iron bars and hammers. Stefanov was hospitalised in critical condition, with broken arms and legs, a brain concussion, and severe blood loss.
The onslaught against editorial staff of Frognews followed the closure of the website Opasnite Novini (The Dangerous News) which posted “classified” news about corruption cases. The site particularly scrutinised the inner workings of Bulgaria’s security services and quickly gained the attention of Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security (DANS). The articles on Opasnite ran anonymously.
The system administrator of Frognews, Yorgo Petsas was arrested on 5 September 2008, and questioned for seven hours by the Bulgarian National Security Agency which suspects the editorial team of Frognews of being behind the creation of Opasnite Novini. Opasnite has been inaccessible since 5 September at the DANS’ behest.
Though Stefanov publicly denied being behind Opasnite, he co-wrote a September 3 opinion piece in Frognews, titled “Freedom in Boots.” The article criticized the closure of Opasnite and reported pressure by DANS on his family.
In response to the direct threat to the right to inform the public, we decided to reopen the Opasnite website, which had been closed since 5 September 2008. We retrieved content from the site in Google caches and on several Bulgarian blogs which had conserved them, and reposted them on the website Opasnite.eu.
We believe that the DANS used illegal methods to close the website. Some of the documents posted on the site referred to cases of corruption and serious crimes that should be examined. The DANS has also said on several occasions that the documents were “classified”, recognising that they were news and not rumours. We also want the alleged links between the closure of Opasnite and the murder attempt against journalist Onyan Stefanov to be the subject of an in-depth investigation. Closure of the website would mean an unacceptable destruction of evidence.
Anna Politkovskaya freedom of thought organisation
Atanas Tchobanov - journalist, www.parisvesti.com
Bogomil Shopov - blogger, Electronic Frontier
Maria Dermendjieva
Mihail Konstantinov
Ivan Tramurtsov
Yasen Bojinov
Cveti Nakeva
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