Bulgaria: An assassination attempt on live TV

Bulgaria has been shamed before the entire world.

Bulgaria has been shamed before the entire world, said Aleko Bichevski in Duma (Bulgaria). Last week, a deranged person stormed the stage at a political conference and pointed a gun at a politician’s temple on live television; when the gun failed to fire, Bulgarian members of parliament rushed the would-be attacker and beat him in a frenzy, stomping him into a bloody mess. No harm was done to the intended target, Ahmed Dogan, who was attacked during his farewell speech as leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the main party of the ethnic Turkish minority. And the attacker, Oktai Enimehmedov, 25, is in custody. But a video of the entire incident went viral on the Internet, and the damage to Bulgaria’s reputation is immeasurable. The attack is “the biggest disgrace of the National Security Service in its entire history.” And the behavior of the deputies who beat Enimehmedov portrays us as “a primitive country where the prevailing mores are tribal.”

The assassination attempt was so surreal it almost seemed staged—and maybe it was, said Miriam Elder in The Guardian (U.K.). It turns out the gun could not have killed Dogan; it was loaded only with pepper spray and jammed before it could be fired. Its wielder, Enimehmedov, is a bizarre figure, reportedly jealous of his brother’s fame as winner of a Bulgarian dance reality show. Many Bulgarians believe Dogan himself staged the attack to boost his party’s image. “It seems like a pretty artificial attempt to present their party as a victim, to rally their voters,” said Ivan Dikov, an editor at the Sofia News Agency.

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