SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Nickolay Mladenov, the man chosen to serve as director-general for U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace in Gaza, is a Bulgarian politician and former U.N. envoy to the Middle East who frequently worked to ease tensions between Israel and Hamas.
His appointment — announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday and confirmed by a U.S. official — makes him the top official in an unproven international body tasked with governing the Gaza Strip under the next phase of a fragile U.S.-brokered ceasefire after two years of war.
According to the ceasefire agreement, the authority — to be chaired by Trump — is supposed to supervise a new technocratic Palestinian government, the disarmament of Hamas, the deployment of an international security force, additional pullbacks of Israeli troops and reconstruction.
The 53-year-old Mladenov has long been involved in Middle Eastern politics with solid expertise in the region’s dynamic developments.
He is a former Bulgarian defense and foreign minister who served as the U.N. envoy to Iraq before being appointed as the U.N. Mideast peace envoy from 2015-2020.
Milen Keremedchiev, a former diplomat and expert on Middle East politics, said Mladenov’s appointment is the result of his significant contributions to peace, adding that he had earned the trust of both Israel and the Palestinians.
“Bulgaria has long been perceived as a moderate country, one that has avoided extremes in this particularly acute conflict,” Keremedchiev said, adding that during his tenure as foreign minister, Mladenov consistently maintained a carefully balanced approach to the Middle East.
“This approach was positively received by both the Arab world and the State of Israel. Bulgaria’s position has traditionally been one of balance, and he was steadfast in preserving that stance,” he told The Associated Press in an interview in Sofia.
Retired Israeli diplomat Alon Bar, who served as the Foreign Ministry’s deputy director-general for the U.N. and international organizations during Mladenov’s tenure, said it was a “distinct pleasure” working with him.
Bar said that serving as a U.N. envoy is a difficult task given Israel’s long history of rocky relations with the world body, but that Mladenov managed to gain Israel's confidence.
“He was able to create a relationship of trust with the political echelon in Israel, including Prime Minister Netanyahu,” he said. “At the same time, there was a lot of confidence he created on the Palestinian side.”
Mladenov served as the top U.N. envoy in Iraq from 2013 to 2015, before then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him as the organization’s top Mideast envoy. During that job, he helped to defuse cross-border violence between Israel and Hamas and keep up the idea of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In Bulgaria, Mladenov held the position of defense minister for a year, before serving as foreign minister from 2010 to 2013, during the uprisings in the Middle East known as the Arab Spring when Syria also descended into civil war.
In 2012, he hosted in Bulgaria the first-ever meeting of the Syrian opposition, which brought together representatives of various factions that oppose Bashar Assad’s government. The forum ended with a joint declaration that marked the start of a structured dialogue between the various opposition groups.
In the early years of his political career, Mladenov founded the European Institute in Sofia and was its director until 2001. That same year, he was elected a member of the National Assembly on the ticket of the center-right Union of Democratic Forces.
In 2007, Mladenov was elected a member of the European Parliament, where he met his wife, Gergana, the mother of their three children.
As a sign of recognition for his peace efforts in the Middle East, he received in February 2021 the Grand Star of the Order of Jerusalem, awarded by the Palestinian president to officials, envoys, and prominent figures in recognition of their service.
“He knows us, and he knows the Israelis very well, which is a significant advantage,” said Ahmed Majdalani, a Palestinian former minister and member of the PLO Executive Committee. “I believe he is very well-suited for the position."
Currently, Mladenov is based in the United Arab Emirates, where he was appointed to run the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy.
The diplomat holds master’s degrees in War Studies from King’s College London and International Relations from the University of National and World Economy in Sofia.
Bar, the Israeli diplomat, said Mladenov in his diplomacy was focused “not only on declarations and statements, but on trying to connect and trying to find bridges and trying to see where are the places where the positions of Israel, the Palestinians could meet.”
He said these skills would serve him well in his newest position.
“I think it is good news that he’s coming back to this place for this very difficult task,” Bar said. “I think he’s the right man for the job.”
Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed reporting.
CORRECTED NAME SPELLING - FILE - United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov leaves after a press conference, in Gaza City, Feb. 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)
CORRECTED NAME SPELLING - FILE - United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov attends a press conference at the (UNSCO) offices in Gaza City, Sept. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty on Friday called on members of the public to send any video or other evidence in the fatal shooting of Renee Good directly to her office, challenging the Trump administration's decision to leave the investigation solely to the FBI.
Moriarty said that although her office has collaborated effectively with the FBI in past cases, she is concerned by the Trump administration's decision to bar state and local agencies from playing any role in the investigation into Wednesday's killing of Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis. Specifically, she said she's worried the FBI won't share evidence with state investigators.
“We do have jurisdiction to make this decision with what happened in this case,” she said at a news conference. “It does not matter that it was a federal law enforcement agent.”
Moriarty said her office would post a link for the public to submit footage of the shooting, even though she acknowledged that she wasn't sure what legal outcome submissions might produce.
She also said that despite the Trump administration's insistence that the officer who shot Good has complete legal immunity, that isn't the case.
The prosecutor's announcement came as Minneapolis braced for another day of protests over Good's killing and a day after federal immigration officers shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon.
The reaction to the Good's shooting was immediate in the city where police killed George Floyd in 2020, with hundreds of people turning up to the scene to vent their outrage at the ICE officers and the school district canceling classes for the rest of the week as a precaution.
On Thursday night, hundreds marched in freezing rain down one of Minneapolis’ major thoroughfares, chanting “ICE out now!” and holding signs saying, “Killer ice off our streets." The day began with a charged demonstration outside of a federal facility that is serving as a hub for the immigration crackdown that began Tuesday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Authorities erected barricades outside the facility Friday.
City workers, meanwhile, removed barricades made of old Christmas trees and other debris that had been blocking the streets near the scene of Good's shooting. Officials said they would leave up a makeshift shrine to the 37-year-old mother of three.
The shootings in Portland took place outside a hospital Thursday afternoon. A man and woman, identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Venezuela nationals Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, were shot inside a vehicle, and their conditions were not immediately known. The FBI and the Oregon Department of Justice were investigating.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the city council called on ICE to end all operations in the city until a full investigation is completed. Hundreds protested Thursday night at a local ICE building. Early Friday, Portland police reported that officers had arrested several protesters after asking the to move from the street to the sidewalk, to allow traffic to flow.
Just as it did following Good's shooting, DHS defended the actions of the officers in Portland, saying it occurred after a Venezuelan man with alleged gang ties and who was involved in a recent shooting tried to “weaponize” his vehicle to hit the officers. It wasn't immediately clear if the shootings were captured on video, as Good's was.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly characterized the Minneapolis shooting as an act of self-defense and cast Good as a villain, suggesting she used her vehicle as a weapon to attack the officer who shot her.
But state and local officials and protesters rejected that characterization, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey saying video recordings show the self-defense argument is “garbage.”
The Minneapolis shooting happened on the second day of the immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, which Homeland Security said is the biggest immigration enforcement operation ever. More than 2,000 officers are taking part and Noem said they have made more than 1,500 arrests.
The government is also shifting immigration officers to Minneapolis from sweeps in Louisiana, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. This represents a pivot, as the Louisiana crackdown that began in December had been expected to last into February.
Good's death — at least the fifth tied to immigration sweeps since Trump took office — has resonated far beyond Minneapolis, as protests happening in other places, including Texas, California, Detroit and Missouri.
In Washington, D.C., on Thursday, a woman held a sign that said, “Stop Trump’s Gestapo,” as hundreds of people marched to the White House. Protesters in Pflugerville, Texas, north of Austin, banged on the walls of an ICE facility. And a man in Los Angeles burned an American flag in front of federal detention center.
A day before Moriarty called on the public to help her office investigate Good's killing, the Minnesota agency that investigates officer-involved shootings said it was told that the FBI and U.S. Justice Department would not work with it, effectively ending any role for the state to determine if crimes were committed. Noem said the state has no jurisdiction.
“Without complete access to the evidence, witnesses and information collected, we cannot meet the investigative standards that Minnesota law and the public demands,” Drew Evans, head of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said Thursday.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz demanded that the state be allowed to take part, repeatedly emphasizing that it would be “very difficult for Minnesotans” to accept that an investigation excluding the state could be fair.
Several bystanders captured video of Good's killing, which happened in a neighborhood south of downtown.
The recordings show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of it pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.
It is not clear from the videos if the vehicle makes contact with the officer, and there is no indication of whether the woman had interactions with agents earlier. After the shooting, the SUV speeds into two cars parked on a curb before crashing to a stop.
The federal agent who fatally shot Good is an Iraq War veteran who has served for nearly two decades in the Border Patrol and ICE, according to records obtained by AP.
Noem has not publicly named him, but a Homeland Security spokesperson said her description of his injuries last summer refers to an incident in Bloomington, Minnesota, in which court documents identify him as Jonathan Ross.
Ross got his arm stuck in the window of a vehicle whose driver was fleeing arrest on an immigration violation. Ross was dragged and fired his Taser. A jury found the driver guilty of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.
Attempts to reach Ross, 43, at phone numbers and email addresses associated with him were not successful.
Associated Press reporters Steve Karnowski and Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis; Ed White in Detroit; Valerie Gonzalez in Brownsville, Texas; Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma; Michael Biesecker in Washington; Jim Mustian in New York; Ryan Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.
An American flag burns outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
Two protesters are lit by a police light as they walk outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
Protesters are arrested by federal agents outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)
Protesters sit on a barrier that is being assembled outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building as protesters gather in Minneapolis, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)
Protesters stand off against law enforcement outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
Demonstrators protest outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Protesters chant and march during a rally for Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer the day before, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Protesters gather during a rally for Renee Good, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, after she was fatally shot by an ICE officer the day before. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)
Protesters confront federal agents outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)
People gather around a makeshift memorial honoring the victim of a fatal shooting involving federal law enforcement agents, near the site of the shooting, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)
U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino arrives as protesters gather outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)
A protester pours water in their eye after confronting law enforcement outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)
People gather around a makeshift memorial honoring the victim of a fatal shooting involving federal law enforcement agents, near the site of the shooting, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)
