BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN
Last month, I wrote about Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva’s revelations that Azerbaijan’s state-run Silk Way Airlines had shipped under diplomatic cover 350 planeloads of heavy weapons and ammunition to terrorist groups in Syria and many other countries in the last three years.
On Aug. 24, Dilyana tweeted: “I just got fired for telling the truth about weapons supplies for terrorists in Syria on diplomatic flights.”
Dilyana posted on her facebook page that she was fired due to pressure on the government of Bulgaria by Azerbaijan, as she was about to leave for Syria to continue her investigation.
In an interview with Armenpress, Dilyana said that before her firing she was called by the Bulgarian Special Security Agency and asked about her sources of information for her revelations. She replied that her source was the website of the Embassy of Azerbaijan which was hacked, but she would not provide any further details. Two hours later, she got a phone call from her newspaper, Trud Daily, telling her that she was dismissed.
After she published her article, Dilyana revealed that the Azeri Embassy urged the Bulgarian government to investigate her; as a result she was fired from her job.
The daring Bulgarian journalist, however, refuses to remain silent! She told Armenpress that no one can stop her from continuing her investigation: “They couldn’t stop me two months ago; they couldn’t stop me yesterday to speak out. I just posted on social media. They can’t force an independent journalist to keep silent. I’m not obliged to anybody. I’m obliged to tell the truth to the people, this is my job.”
