Shorouk Express
“There are no spies” in this court, said Camille Di Tella, a lawyer for 28-year-old Kiril Milushev, who said he only agreed to the short Paris trip for recreational purposes and filmed the red handprints while drunk without realizing where he was.
Georgi Filipov, 36, who painted the red hands on the memorial’s Wall of the Righteous, broke into tears in his final remarks to the court when he said his nine-year-old son had seen him on Bulgarian TV labelled a Russian spy. “He said he was ashamed of me. I am ashamed too.”
Filipov explained his large tattoos depicting neo-Nazi symbols by his joining a nationalist group in his youth after a childhood marred in violence, during Bulgaria’s democratic transition in the 1990s.
Nikolay Ivanov, 42, was described in intelligence notes read out in court as the likely ringleader and orchestrator of the operation from Bulgaria, receiving instructions via Telegram in Russian.
Ivanov, who intelligence background notes say has been in touch with suspected Russian spies in the past, failed to convince judges that he was “duped” by a friend, Mircho Angelov, the only one of the four still at large. Ivanov was handed a four-year prison sentence.
Angelov, 27, who has been described in court as the main organizer on the ground, received a three-year prison sentence.
