SOFIA, Bulgaria (Armenpress) — Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, a Bulgarian journalist who published a scandalous report on Azerbaijani state-run airline’s supply of weapons to different unsettled parts of the world under the cover of diplomatic flights, has been dismissed from her post.
“Today after I was interrogated by the Bulgarian National Security Agency about the secret documents, which were leaked to me about the weapons supplies for terrorists in Syria, I was fired by Trud Daily, just few days before going back to Syria to continue my job,” she writes on Facebook, with her investigation attached, but at the same she doubts that the source can be removed from Trud Daily.
A scandalous investigation was published in the Bulgarian Trud newspaper on July 2 which reveals the Azerbaijani state circles’ direct engagement in supplying weapons to Islamic terrorist groups at different parts of the world.
Gaytandzhieva’s article mainly focuses on the illegal and large-scale export and sale of arms to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Congo by Silk Way Airlines (an Azerbaijani state-run company) under the cover of diplomatic flights. Documents implicating Silk Way Airlines in arms supplies were sent to the author of the article by an anonymous twitter account – Anonymous Bulgaria. Gaytandzhieva says over the past three years the state aircrafts of Azerbaijan carried on board tens of tons of heavy weapons and ammunition headed to terrorists. She added that some of the weapons that Azerbaijan carries on diplomatic flights were used by its military in Nagorno Karabakh.
The international media broadly reacted to Gaytandzhieva’s investigation. Pressure was exerted on others in Bulgaria, as well. The Azerbaijani ambassador even urged the Union of Journalists of Bulgaria to freeze journalist Tsvetana Paskaleva’s membership, as well as to hinder the events of AGBU Bulgaria branch that carries out legal activity in that country. Weeks ago, it became known that Chairman of AGBU Bulgaria’s youth union Hayk Karapetyan had to leave the post of the member of the Plovdiv National and Integration Council under still undisclosed circumstances. The reason, according to Armenpress information, was the interference of the Azerbaijani side and the fact that Bulgaria’s state bodies succumbed to pressures instead of protecting the rights of a citizen of the country.
