Roma leader Kiril Rashkov sentenced in Bulgaria.

The authorities in Bulgaria have arrested a local Roma leader on charges of threatening to commit murder.

The cout approved that the Roma leader really threatened 2 of his villagers with murder. He was sentenced to 3,5 years.

The detention of Kiril Rashkov - nicknamed "King Kiro" - comes amid heightened ethnic tension in Bulgaria, in 2011, September.

Anti-Roma demonstrations have spread and turned into the worst violence for years, leading to mass arrests.

The violence was triggered after Roma clan leader Kiril Rashkov in the Katunitsa village, near Bulgaria’s second largest city of Plovdiv, was blamed for the death of 19-year-old Angela Petrov, in 2011.

An angry crowd of about 2,000 people then gathered and attacked three houses owned by the Roma leader in the village of Katunitsa, shouting anti-Roma slogans.

Small but at times violent demonstrations by nationalist youth then spread to 14 towns over the weekend.

Then, the police also arrested Rashkov, 69, who is known throughout the Balkan country as "Tzar Kiro", and has been under investigation for large-scale tax evasion for several years and for illegal production of alcoholic beverages. He was arrested on a claim filed on September 23 by another villager that Rashkov threatened him with murder. The National Revenue Service froze all of Rashkov’s assets and started 18 investigations of his business.