The Kardzhali District Court acquitted Lyutvi Mestan of the charges related to the crash near the Momchilgrad village of Zagorsko in 2019, in which a baby was killed. In the case, the court handed the second defendant – the child’s father, Yusein Ahmed – a suspended sentence.
Ahmed was sentenced to three years in prison with a five-year probation period. He was also banned from driving a car for six years and must pay legal costs amounting to more than 27 thousand euros. The verdict was announced after nine hours of closing arguments. It can be appealed within 15 days before the Plovdiv Court of Appeal.
After the verdict was announced, Lyutvi Mestan thanked the court for its decision.
He said that the verdict had restored his confidence in Bulgaria’s judicial system. According to him, the actions of the prosecution had violated his constitutional rights. Mestan added that after the proceedings had ended definitively, he would seek his rights against people who, in his view, had given false testimony.
Yusein Ahmed declined to comment. His lawyer, Nikolay Dimitrov, announced that the defence would appeal the guilty verdict and request the collection of additional evidence.
“This is the expert report on which the court based the guilty verdict against our client,” Dimitrov said.The lawyer questioned the experts’ findings and said that one of them had not passed the required examinations, while the other had not appeared for an examination. The defence expects a new expert assessment to be admitted at the second instance.
Sources: bta.bg, bnrnews.bg, vesti.bg