Bulgarian fugitive convicted in suffocation deaths of 18 stowaways arrested in U.S.

By Jonathan Kaminsky
OLYMPIA, Washington | Mon Oct 21, 2013 8:24pm EDT

(Reuters) - A Bulgarian fugitive convicted in the suffocation deaths of 18 Sri Lankan stowaways who died in the back of a truck he was driving nearly two decades ago has been arrested near Seattle and faces possible extradition to his home country, U.S. authorities said on Monday.

Plamen Vladimirov Trifonov, 58, was found guilty in Bulgaria of negligent homicide and human trafficking in 2002 in connection with the 1995 incident. He was sentenced to eight years in prison but did not serve his sentence.

The arrest was made at the behest of the Bulgarian government earlier this month, which has requested his extradition, federal court documents show. Trifonov is being held in a federal detention center in the city of SeaTac and is scheduled to appear for an extradition and detention hearing on November 1.

Before his arrest, Trifonov had been working as a long-haul trucker based in Washington state, said Seattle-based Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal James Adkins, who commands the interagency task force that seized him.

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