“There aren’t any spies” on this court docket, stated Camille Di Tella, a lawyer for 28-year-old Kiril Milushev, who stated he solely agreed to the brief Paris journey for leisure functions and filmed the pink handprints whereas drunk with out realizing the place he was.
Georgi Filipov, 36, who painted the pink fingers on the memorial’s Wall of the Righteous, broke into tears in his remaining remarks to the court docket when he stated his nine-year-old son had seen him on Bulgarian TV labelled a Russian spy. “He stated he was ashamed of me. I’m ashamed too.”
Filipov defined his massive tattoos depicting neo-Nazi symbols by his becoming a member of a nationalist group in his youth after a childhood marred in violence, throughout Bulgaria’s democratic transition within the Nineteen Nineties.
Nikolay Ivanov, 42, was described in intelligence notes learn out in court docket because the probably ringleader and orchestrator of the operation from Bulgaria, receiving directions by way of Telegram in Russian.
Ivanov, who intelligence background notes say has been in contact with suspected Russian spies previously, didn’t persuade judges that he was “duped” by a buddy, Mircho Angelov, the one one of many 4 nonetheless at massive. Ivanov was handed a four-year jail sentence.
Angelov, 27, who has been described in court docket as the primary organizer on the bottom, obtained a three-year jail sentence.
