Yordan Tsitsonkov

The IMRO was in heavy opposition to the Bulgarian prime minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski who wanted to establish a closer bilateral friendship with Yugoslavia.

In March 1922 he was given the task of assassinating Rayko Daskalov, a fierce opponent of the IMRO, who held a number of posts in Stamboliyski's Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BANU) government and commanded the paramilitary Orange Guard.

[1][2] In March 1923 Stamboliyski signed the Treaty of Niš, which obliged the Tsardom of Bulgaria to suppress the operations of the IMRO carried out from Bulgarian territory.

The same month vojvoda Pancho Mikhailov (1891–1925) gave Tsitsonkov a fake passport with the name "Atanas Nikolov", a revolver, and a large sum of money.

The IMRO took responsibility for defending him, and hired the well-known Czech nationalist lawyer Jan Renner and the famous painter Professor Ivan Mrkvička to speak in his defence.

[9] He was released not long afterwards, after during a 13–14 November Prague trial the jury sentenced him to only 48 hours in jail, with 8 votes against 4, under the argument that he had not acted on behalf of the Tsankov government, and had committed the deed under pressure from death threats by the IMRO.