Capture and Execution
In that situation, Levski's assistant Dimitar Obshti robbed an Ottoman postal convoy in the Arabakonak pass on 22 September 1872, without approval from Levski or the leadership of the movement. While the robbery was successful and provided IRO with 125,000 groschen, Obshti and the other perpetrators were soon arrested. The preliminary investigation and trial revealed the revolutionary organisation's size and its close relations with BRCC. Obshti and other prisoners made a full confession and revealed Levski's leading role.
Realising that he was in danger, Levski decided to flee to Romania, where he would meet Karavelov and discuss these events. First, however, he had to collect important documentation from the committee archive in Lovech, which would constitute important evidence if seized by the Ottomans. He stayed at the nearby village inn in Kakrina, where he was surprised and arrested on the morning of 27 December 1872. Starting with the writings of Lyuben Karavelov the most accepted version has been that a priest named Krastyo Nikiforov betrayed Levski to the police. This theory has been disputed by the researchers Ivan Panchovski and Vasil Boyanov for lack of evidence.
Initially taken to Tarnovo for interrogation, Levski was sent to Sofia on 4 January. There, he was brought to trial. While he acknowledged his identity, he did not reveal his accomplices or details related to his organisation, taking full blame. Ottoman authorities sentenced Levski to death by hanging. Although he was recognised as an instigator of a major armed uprising, the death sentence was based on a Lovech servant's murder that Levski committed while attempting to extort money from a wealthy local. The verdict was carried out on 18 February 1873 in Sofia, where the Monument to Vasil Levski now stands. The location of Levski's grave is uncertain, but in the 1980s writer Nikolay Haytov campaigned for the Church of St. Petka of the Saddlers as Levski's burial place, which the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences concluded as possible yet unverifiable.
Levski's death intensified the crisis in the Bulgarian revolutionary movement and most IRO committees soon disintegrated. Nevertheless, five years after his hanging, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 secured the liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in the wake of the April Uprising of 1876. The Treaty of San Stefano of 3 March 1878 established the Bulgarian state as an autonomous Principality of Bulgaria under de jure Ottoman suzerainty.
Read more about this topic: Vasil Levski, Biography
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