Amnesty International Report 1999 - Bulgaria

BULGARIA

One conscientious objector to military service was imprisoned and considered to be a prisoner of conscience. There were numerous reports of torture and ill-treatment by law enforcement officials: many of the victims were Roma. At least nine people were shot and killed by police officers in disputed circumstances; dozens of others were injured. At least three people were sentenced to death. The death penalty was abolished.

In February it was reported that President Petar Stoyanov would propose abolition of the death penalty to the Advisory Council on National Security. In October the Legal Committee of the National Assembly recommended that the death penalty should be abolished for all offences in the revision of the Penal Code. In December the National Assembly abolished the death penalty, replacing it with life imprisonment without the possibility of commutation.

When in April the Legal Committee of the National Assembly rejected a proposal for a moratorium on the imprisonment of journalists convicted of insult and libel, Vice-President Todor Kavaldjiev stated that he would grant such journalists pardons. Fifty-four members of the National Assembly signed a petition to the Constitutional Court calling for the abolition of insult and libel as criminal offences. However, the Court ruled in July that criminal prohibition of libel and insult was not unconstitutional.

In September the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe decided to continue monitoring Bulgaria's honouring of obligations and commitments. Two Council of Europe rapporteurs who visited Bulgaria in June expressed concern about police violence – particularly against members of religious communities, Roma and street children – and about unacceptable conditions in two institutions for convicted juveniles.

In October the National Assembly adopted the Law on Alternative Service. Certain provisions, including the length of alternative service which was envisaged to be twice as long as military service, were at variance with internationally recognized principles.

Prosecutions of conscientious objectors to military service continued. In April Krassimir Nikolov Savov was sentenced by Plovdiv Municipal Court to one year's imprisonment for evading military service. His conviction was confirmed by the District Court and the Plovdiv Appellate Court. In December he was imprisoned in Plovdiv prison to serve his sentence.

Many journalists were charged with insult and libel throughout the year. In October Karolina Kraeva, a journalist from Vratsa charged with libelling the local chief of police (see Amnesty International Report 1998), was sentenced to two years and four months' imprisonment. She was at liberty pending an appeal at the end of the year.

In July Mitko Shtirkov, who had been sentenced to four months' suspended imprisonment for defaming a local prosecutor (see Amnesty International Reports 1997 and 1998), was acquitted by the Superior Court of Cassation.

There were numerous reports of torture and ill-treatment by police officers. As in previous years, the authorities failed to investigate such reports promptly and impartially or to take adequate measures to address the problem of police torture and ill-treatment. In May this was acknowledged by the Chief Prosecutor and the Director of the National Investigation Service who stated that "serious violations of laws, of rights and freedoms of citizens are ever more frequent in the practice of the Ministry of the Interior". In a letter addressed to the President, the Prime Minister and chairs of parliamentary groups in the National Assembly, they described in detail five cases of police beatings and other abuses. Evgeni Ignatov, Nikolai Nikolov and Aleksandar Karaichev were detained in Sofia in January on suspicion of theft. The letter stated that "in the course of ‘questioning' in the Fifth Regional Police Directorate physical force was illegally used in order to extract confessions". The three men were held for three days without ever being presented with an arrest warrant, "leading to the conclusion that their detention had been illegal". In another case, two suspects detained in February in Sofia were severely beaten by officers who took from them, without a receipt, a substantial sum of money, a gold bracelet and a watch.

According to the Director of the National Investigation Service, 97 people detained in 1997 and 38 people detained between January and mid-March 1998, were subjected to police violence before being admitted to the detention facilities of the investigation services. The injuries described ranged from serious fractures or gunshot injuries, to lesions, contusions and weals of varying extent and severity. For example, Anatoli I. H., detained in February in Smolyan, reportedly suffered extensive bruising and complained of having been subjected to prolonged use of electric shock batons. He was hospitalized after suffering a heart attack.

In March the Deputy Chief Prosecutor and the Prosecutor of the Armed Forces reported on the status of more than 70 preliminary inquiries conducted by military prosecutors into alleged "offences against the person" by police officers. These inquiries had reportedly not been completed because of lack of cooperation from the Ministry of the Interior. For example, the Sofia Military Prosecutor had still not been able to complete an inquiry initiated in 1993 into a shooting by two officers which resulted in the death of one person and grave injury to two others. In the first four months of 1998, military prosecutors, who are responsible for investigating alleged offences by police officers, reportedly initiated inquiries into nine cases, including a death in custody as a result of beating and three deaths by shooting.

Many victims of torture and ill-treatment were Roma. For example, in March in Krivodol, following a fight between a Romani man and a police officer, approximately 15 police officers reportedly entered the Romani neighbourhood and repeatedly fired their guns in the air and beat people indiscriminately. At least 10 Roma reportedly suffered injuries. In July approximately 80 police officers wearing helmets and shields raided 15 houses in the Romani neighbourhood of the village of Mechka, in the Pleven region. They reportedly beat more than 30 men, women and children indiscriminately with truncheons. At least 15 people were injured; the oldest victim was aged 67 and the youngest was 11. Although the motives for the raid were not clear, one report stated that on the same afternoon a Romani woman had struck a police officer in a dispute.

At least nine unarmed people were killed by police officers in disputed circumstances. Dozens of people were injured in other police shootings reported throughout the year. For example, in January, in Sofia, Tsvetan Kovachev, a 17-year-old Rom, was shot in the head by police officers, reportedly while he was running away from them with a man suspected of having killed a taxi driver. Tsvetan Kovachev died in hospital the same day. An investigation was initiated, but by the end of the year no information was available as to whether the officers involved had been suspended from duty.

In August Hristo Tanev, who was in pre-trial detention, was shot and killed by a guard as he reportedly attempted to escape unarmed from the Pleven penitentiary by climbing over a fence. Another detainee who was with Hristo Tanev was apprehended 200 metres from the fence.

In October, two men were sentenced to death for murder by the Pazardjik county court. One man was sentenced to death for murder by the Varna county court in November. After the abolition of the death penalty in December, Vice-President Todor Kavaldjiev reportedly stated that he would pardon all those under sentence of death.

In February Amnesty International called on the National Assembly to ensure that the draft law on alternative service conformed to internationally recognized principles on conscientious objection. The organization expressed concern that some provisions under debate might allow the government to deny the right to alternative service to people belonging to unrecognized religious communities or to individuals who developed a conscientious objection to carrying arms even though their religious community was not opposed to military service.

Throughout the year Amnesty International called on the authorities to revise the Law on the Ministry of the Interior, which regulates the use of firearms by law enforcement officers and does not conform to the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, and to investigate new incidents of police shootings in disputed circumstances, described in a report published in December.

In August the organization published Bulgaria: New cases of ill-treatment of Roma and urged the authorities to promptly and impartially investigate the incidents described. In December Amnesty International called for the release of Krassimir Nikolov Savov and urged President Stoyanov to initiate a judicial review of the Law on Alternative Service.

Amnesty International received replies from the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Justice concerning four deaths in custody in suspicious circumstances in 1997. The organization was informed that a police officer had been sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment for murdering Stefan Traikov. Four police officers had been charged with murdering Mincho Simeonov Sartmachev. However, no one had been charged with the beating of another detainee, who was allegedly tortured at the same time as Mincho Simeonov Sartmachev. An investigation into the death of Valentin Nedev, who had reportedly died from tuberculosis five days after his release from custody, was in progress; the Minister of the Interior claimed that six days before his release he had been medically examined and given a clean bill of health. According to the Minister of Justice, a preliminary investigation into the death of Georgi Byandov (see Amnesty International Report 1998) was suspended because the police officers who participated in his arrest "had been disguised (masked)", and could not be identified. Police authorities in Burgas as well as the director of the National Police Service for Combating Organized Crime reportedly failed to respond to the investigator's repeated requests for information about the officers' identity.

In April a report was received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerning investigations into shooting incidents raised by the organization in its report published in October 1997 (see Amnesty International Report 1998). In one case the military prosecutor decided not to charge the police officer responsible for the shooting, concluding that "the injuries suffered [a bullet injury in the left leg] were less significant than the damage caused [theft of a bicycle], and if the slight bodily injury was inflicted on an incidental bystander it was caused unintentionally." Similarly no one had been charged with the killing of two unarmed soldiers of Romani origin – Kancho Angelov and Kiril Petkov – by military police who attempted to apprehend them after they went absent without permission from their unit in July 1996 (see Amnesty International Report 1997).