Bulgaria refused to arrest Zawahiri in 1995

SOFIA, Bulgaria - Bulgaria twice refused to arrest and extradite Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and now the world's most wanted man, former high-ranking security officials said Thursday.

In 1995, Bulgaria's counter-intelligence received tip-offs that Zawahiri was staying in a small mountain village, according to Vladimir Manolov, counter-intelligence chief in 1994-95 in an interview with Darik radio.

At the time, the Egyptian was wanted by Cairo for his alleged involvement of the 1981 assassination of president Anwar Sadat and a failed 1995 assassination attempt against president Hosni Mubarak.

According to Manolov, the counter-intelligence services contacted the Egyptian embassy in Sofia.

"We received from them one picture and checked it - this was the man. We managed to embed one collaborator close to him and receive more accurate information about his plans," Manolov said.

"It might sound strange, but he was just resting, meeting friends, visiting the local mosque. We found out that this was just a stop during his trip," he said.

During the 20 days that Zawahiri spent in Bulgaria, Sofia even received a warrant from Egypt for his extradition.

But the Bulgarian interior minister at the time, Lyubomir Nachev, refused to act on it, pointing to a lack of an extradition treaty with Egypt, according to Manolov.

The minister also wanted to avoid a diplomatic scandal, Manolov said.

As a result, Zawahiri was free to leave Bulgaria for "a western European country."

At the end of 1995, Bulgaria again refused to arrest Zawahiri during his brief stop-over at an airport here on his way from Austria to Turkey, interior ministry's chief of staff at the time Georgy Lambov also told Darik.

"An arrest warrant came from Austria before his arrival. We had to detain him here. I told them then - why don't you arrest him in Austria, why arrest him in Bulgaria and trigger attacks here!" Lambov said.