There is a trinity of the CPC, the Prosecutor's Office and orchestratedly appointed court panels through non-random distribution of cases.
This was told to the Bulgarian National Radio by lawyer Velislav Velichkov from "Justice for Everyone", adding that "the cases are manually distributed in the Court of Appeal by its deputy chairman, Judge Zhelyazkov, who until now was by all measures - the former deputy mayor of Sofia Nikola Barbutov and the mayor of Varna Blagomir Kotsev, but he recused himself because the court panel was attacked by lawyers and civil organizations, but he personally appointed the next chairman of the panel - Stefan Iliev, who is a full-time officer of the State Security (DS), who confirmed Kotsev's stay in custody. Of the three judges in the panel, two are State Security Service employees and one is a specialized judge.
According to lawyer Velichkov, the competent court in the "Kotsev" case is the Varna court, "since there is no person with immunity in the so-called organized crime group, no one's immunity has been requested and no one's name has been stated by the prosecutor's office, i.e. there is no such person":
"The case has no place in Sofia, because it is not being heard against a person with immunity. These are very serious violations that will most likely have an extremely serious international impact and confirm that this is a political case in which we have political prisoners - Blagomir Kotsev and Nikola Barbutov".