Nikola Dimitrov Petkov

Petkov's parliamentary immunity was lifted on 5 June 1947 and he was arrested inside the National Assembly building, where colleagues who tried to stop the arrest were beaten. The charge rested on officers such as Marko Ivanov and Boris Gergov, who were said to have been organising the revival of the Military Union and the preparation of a coup. From 6 June to 15 July 1947 he was interrogated by State Security over that alleged plot. Heavy international interest in the case meant he was spared the usual torture, but his conditions in detention were monitored personally by Georgi Dimitrov. He rejected every charge, saying that he still supported the Fatherland Front's founding declaration and the original programme of its government of 17 September 1944, while rejecting the violence carried out by the regime.

The staged trial ran from 5 to 14 August 1947. On 16 August he was sentenced to death by hanging and to a fine of half a million leva under the Ordinance-Law for the Protection of People's Power. The defence was denied the chance to call evidence and Western governments protested; 23 other opposition deputies were also unseated, which in practice destroyed the opposition's representation in the legislature. The execution itself was delayed: the authorities waited for the peace treaty with the United Nations to enter into force on 15 September, and at the same time tried to persuade Petkov to ask for mercy by admitting guilt. He refused to write a petition in his own hand, so the services drew one up in his name, which was later displayed in the Museum of Revolutionary Vigilance. He was denied a Christian burial and the last rites, and after his death the secret police arranged for a false confession to be printed publicly; it was so obviously faked that the move became an embarrassment and the authorities stopped mentioning it.

The decision to execute had in fact been taken when he was arrested, but even after the verdict the leadership weighed whether to carry it out. On 13 September Vasil Kolarov put the question in writing to Dimitrov, who was in Moscow, setting out his fears of an adverse reaction in the country and proposing that the sentence be commuted to life imprisonment, with Petkov "completely neutralised in prison". On 17 September Dimitrov, who regarded such a step as a dangerous display of weakness by the regime, ordered the sentence carried out, citing the opinion of the Soviet authorities. On 19 September the US State Department informed Sofia that diplomatic recognition of Dimitrov's regime was imminent while continuing to press for the death sentence to be cancelled. The sentence was carried out at 1 a.m. on 23 September 1947 in Sofia Central Prison; his body was buried in an unmarked grave in the Central Sofia Cemetery.