Petya Altimirska to FACTS: We have been working for over 10 months to uncover the animal abuse videos

A man and a woman were detained on Friday and charged with cruelty to animals, causing them a painful death. 26-year-old Gabriela Sashova and 35-year-old Krasimir Georgiev were arrested by the State Department of Anti-Money Laundering on suspicion of having placed the videos on the dark web, mainly to foreigners. The two are also charged with money laundering. What happened… Petya Altimirska, chairwoman of the association “Campaigns and Activism for Animals in Industry", which has filed a report with the Bulgarian Animal Protection Agency, spoke to FACTI.

- Ms. Altimirska, how did the unraveling of the whole scheme with these animal violence videos begin?
- It all started 10 months ago, when we received a report from the Eurogroup for Animals, because we are members of that Eurogroup. The Eurogroup is a coalition of animal protection organizations based in Brussels that deals with legislation at the European level for animals. Our activity is precisely that - to work for legislation for the protection of animals. The Eurogroup contacted us that they had a report about a criminal case, which, according to their source, leads to Bulgaria. Then this source contacted us and told us that he had sent signals to various Bulgarian institutions, but no one had paid attention and wanted to give them to us. And if we could do something, let's investigate, establish the identity, so that this crime could be solved. He sent us the first video, which showed a woman with a mask, who had tattoos on her body. At first, we couldn't be sure whether she was from Bulgaria. According to the source, the information came from Bulgaria. Then we contacted the Bulgarian Elves and asked them to help us establish the identity.

- And so we found out the address from where these things are being broadcast, from where they are being sent…
- I can't tell you the exact details, but it was established that the woman is from Bulgaria, her identity was established, they managed to find her. It took a long time for us to prove that all this was happening, to be sure that there would be enough evidence for her to be convicted and receive a fair punishment. We had to collect a lot of things.

- How many clips do you have?
- Dozens, over 40. Some of them are very long clips. They are hours of recordings, and the clips feature different animals, dozens of animals. It turned out that she also has a price list on her Telegram channel, in which she described how many animals, what clips she can make, and thus gives people the opportunity to order what they want to happen to the animals. In addition, for Black Friday in November, she had made a promotion on her channel. I am telling you this, but you should keep in mind that we do all of these investigations over a very long period of time, because new and new clips were constantly appearing. Our source was providing us with new and new clips, and we had already filed reports with the police and were working with them to gather as much evidence as possible.

- How were the animals recruited?
- We haven't been able to find out, but I assume that through classifieds sites, because she shared this to some extent in conversations. We are not sure and we have no evidence for this. There is already an enormous amount of information collected by the police that needs to be analyzed, because many items have been confiscated at her various addresses that have been searched. This includes information from computers, mobile devices, etc. It will be analyzed and additional information should come out of it. How did she procure the animals, who ordered what, what was paid for, did those who ordered originate from Bulgaria or from other countries.

- That's exactly what I want to ask you. Is there any clarity at the moment about what the clientele is like - are they people from Bulgaria or from abroad?
- In this Telegram application, there is no way to understand who is from where, because people are anonymous, the channel does not provide personal information about its users, even to law enforcement. So this was certainly a very difficult process to establish whether it was an organized crime group, or whether it was just two people who were doing these things. It was very important for us to understand whether there were more people involved. In any case, what the law enforcement authorities seized, after analyzing it, many new details can be understood. Including whether things stop at animal abuse, or there are other things that can cross the border and move on to violence against people. Also, whether there is a connection with other such people in other countries who do similar things.

- What kind of fashion is this - watching animal abuse…
- It is interesting for many people. This is a shock for a normal person, but, ultimately, we live in such a dynamic world and technologies are developing so much that we must be aware that they also carry with them these risks for communication that goes beyond the limits of normality, of things that are bearable for a person. Of course, people have different personalities, there are many people with perverted needs, but psychologists are the best ones to say what is happening there.

- Can we talk about trends?
- This is not something that is an isolated case. We must know that such people exist, they are among us and these people are looking for the easiest and most convenient way to satisfy their own needs. Very often, as in pedophilia, these people seek access to children through kindergartens, schools... The same is true of people who need to abuse animals. In fact, this is very often done in animal breeding facilities. So our call is to all owners of livestock facilities to be careful and analyze their staff very well. It is important to say that within the framework of what we have been doing in the association “Say“ for so many years, this is not something exceptional, I mean what is happening right now. We cannot say that it is something exceptional, because we have seen a lot of really serious materials from livestock facilities and what is being done to the animals there. Yes, they are in industrial animal husbandry, which, of course, does not justify them in any way. We want to say that this exists, that this is a type of practice. Now whether this will be sold for money, or the animals are simply killed for pleasure - it does not matter at all for the animals themselves, and for the people who watch, too.