After repeatedly condemning repression of the revolt, Rakovsky was, together with other socialists, officially accused of having agitated rebellious sentiment, and consequently expelled from Romanian soil (late 1907). He received news of this action while already abroad, in Stuttgart (at the Seventh Congress of the Second International). He decided not to recognize it, and contended that his father had settled in Northern Dobruja before the Treaty of Berlin that had awarded the region to Romania; the plea was rejected by the Court of Appeal, based on evidence that Rakovsky's father was not in Dobruja before 1880, and that Rakovsky himself used a Bulgarian passport when moving across borders. During the 1920s, Rakovsky was still viewing the incident as a "blatantly illegal act".