Bulgarian, Macedonian Probe Don't Concur on Ohrid Tragedy

Fifteen Bulgarians died when the tour boat Ilinden capsized in the Ohrid Lake in Macedonia on September 5, 2009 Photo by EPA/BGNES

The two probes, Bulgarian and Macedonian, in the tragedy in which 15 Bulgarians drowned in the Macedonian Lake Ohrid last September, had led to different conclusions.

The Bulgarian investigator, Georgi Iliev, told the TV channel bTV that Bulgarian authorities believe the cause of the accident, listed by their Macedonian counterparts as a rope rupture, is not corresponding to the truth.

A total of 15 Bulgarian tourists drowned and 40 more were injured as the Ilinden tour boat sunk in the Ohrid Lake in September 2009. The Bulgarians, mostly retirees, were on a vacation trip to Macedonia.

The Bulgarian probe had revealed that the rope in question had ruptured numerous times before, but the boat never sunk. According to Iliev, in addition to the rope, the lax control on the part of the Macedonian navigation authorities must be examined as cause of the tragedy.

So far, the Prosecutor’s Office in the town of Ohrid has charged the captain of the obsolete tourist boat, Sotir Filevski, and Branko Baic, the Croatian representative of the German company Lloyd, which manages the technical control of the Ohrid boats. Baic had inspected the vessel and issued a technical permit for its operation.

The Bulgarian investigators say the Head of the Coastal Guard of the Ohrid Lake must also be charged because his office failed to meet and send away each boat and to monitor the correct load distribution.

The Bulgarian authorities have already requested documentation listing the rights and the responsibilities of the above office.

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