A special operation by the police, prosecutor's office, anti-mafia and Europol in the Vratsa region. According to preliminary information, the activities of several Bulgarian citizens for the dissemination of far-right ideology and calls for violence on the Internet were disrupted. Three people were detained.
Cyber expert Yavor Kolev and the chief expert in the “Security” program at the Center for the Study of Democracy Tihomir Bezlov commented on the topic in “Your Day“ on NOVA NEWS.
“Over the years, we have repeatedly detained young people who have propagated radical ideas on social networks. In this case, we see that it is a group that is driven by an international terrorist organization that operated on the territory of European countries. I recognize the so-called called The Base. It has been declared a terrorist formation in the USA, Europe and Australia“, said Kolev.
According to him, the leader of The Base is a former American soldier who was on missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. After returning, he married a Russian woman, and according to Kolev, he now lives in St. Petersburg.
For Tihomir Bezlov, the question is whether there are other similar cases in our country that are part of such a network.
“In practice, we know almost nothing – is the case related to a Russian effort or is this a Western European neo-fascist network? I hope we will see more in court“, he noted.
According to him, the far-right neo-fascist ideology is not widespread in Bulgaria, nor the far-left, which is even absent in our latitudes.
“The ratio between employees who deal with crimes in the offline space and those in the online environment is… 100 people deal with cybercrime – extremely insufficient“, Kolev was categorical.
Tikhomir Bezlov emphasized that he rarely sees DANS and the Directorate of the State Anti-Corruption Bureau together in an operation.
“This shows that DANS clearly does not have good specialists in the field of cybercrime. That is why they resorted to the services of the Directorate of the State Anti-Corruption Bureau“, Kolev specified.