The “position“ published on the Prosecutor's Office's website regarding the court orders issued by the Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) and the Chairman of the Second Criminal Division of the SCC is excessive in content and affects the prestige of the judiciary. This was stated by the Chairman of the SCC Galina Zakharova in a position distributed by the court's press center, BTA reports.
The Prosecutor's Office issued a position on October 3, which followed a decision of the SCC on October 2, concerning the acting (acting) Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov. According to the SCC decision, Sarafov cannot be acting, and two orders refuse to initiate proceedings on requests filed by him for the reopening of criminal cases. In response, the Prosecutor's Office indicated that with its actions, the leadership of the Supreme Court of Cassation, contrary to the constitutionally defined competence of the court, pursues solely political goals and deepens the created situation of instability in the judiciary, which in turn is dictated by certain political circles and their individual representatives in the judicial system itself.
According to Zakharova, the Prosecutor's Office's position challenges the sovereign authority of the judges of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Cassation to independently perform their constitutional task.
According to the Constitution, the Supreme Court of Cassation is a higher judicial instance. This judicial body is entrusted with the consideration and resolution of certain types of cases, including proceedings for the reopening of criminal cases. Its competence to assess the grounds for admissibility, respectively the merits, of a submitted request for reopening is indisputable, states the Chairman of the Supreme Court of Cassation and adds that there is no democratic country in which a representative of the prosecutor's office would allow himself to publicly challenge the exclusive authority of the judges of the Supreme Court of Cassation to decide their cases based on his own interpretative analysis.
Stigmatizing judges for their legal conclusions in specific cases goes far beyond the limits of permissible criticism, as it only generates a negative attitude towards the court, undermines its authority and actually impairs its independence, points out Galina Zakharova. According to her, the position of the Prosecutor's Office contains dangerous suggestions about unclear political affiliations of the “leadership of the Supreme Court of Cassation“ and his illegitimate participation in resolving cases.
"The Supreme Court of Cassation does not practice command-administrative methods of influencing the internal judicial conviction, based on the law and evidence in the respective case. Judges are free people, completely politically neutral, with excellent legal qualifications and high moral qualities, with a stable awareness of their judicial independence", Zakharova also writes and adds that judges of the Supreme Court of Cassation are not executors of someone else's will, they should not be expected to violate their official duties in order to justify someone else's expectations.
There were reactions to the Supreme Court of Cassation's decision from the head of state Rumen Radev, as well as from representatives of political forces. Politicians in parliament also commented on the Supreme Court of Cassation's opinion on the former Chief Justice Borislav Sarafov.