The judicial panel assigned to consider Blagomir Kotsev's appeal against the Sofia City Court ruling, which denied a change to the preventive measure "detention in custody", has recused itself from the case. Thus, there will be no hearing on Thursday. A new judicial panel is to be elected, and the hearing will most likely be next week.
The reasons:
According to the panel - Alexander Zhelyazkov, Atanaska Kitipova and Desislav Lyubomirov, in connection with the subject matter of the case, an unprecedented negative campaign is being waged against every judge involved in its consideration. Manipulative, false and unrelated claims are being circulated in the public domain, the sole purpose of which is to suggest that the cases are not criminal in nature, BTA reports.
The irresponsible attempts to politically exploit the criminal proceedings, which have grown into an unprecedented, unethical campaign against the judges who ruled in the proceedings, give the court grounds to recuse itself from hearing the case, the court stated.
The desire to avoid the detention of the accused at all costs, regardless of whether there is a basis for such detention, is also clearly visible in the behavior of some of the defense attorneys. Some of the participants in the case and a group of individuals who have no procedural connection to it, but who demonstrate an interest in its outcome, have been expressing their negative personal attitude towards the members of the judicial panels who issued acts in the private proceedings preceding the present one through various media outlets for months, the court also says.
They add that qualifications such as “dependent“, “cudgels“, “incompetent“, “obedient“, etc., have been repeatedly used by some of the defendants' defense attorneys. There are currently such statements against the judge who issued the first-instance judicial act.
It is unacceptable for lawyers to launch false claims through the media that “ the court is an accuser“, that “ the court has a scandalous attitude towards a witness“ that “the court tolerates the prosecution and does not comply with the law“. With such unprofessional statements, on the one hand, the court is “imputed“ with procedural functions that it does not have in these proceedings, but on the other hand, non-lawyers are successfully deceived, the ruling also says.
The expressed negative personal attitude towards the members of the panel and the repeatedly launched tendentious, manipulatively planted in society false claim about existing “dependencies“ obliges the panel of judges, despite the absence of such, to recuse themselves from the consideration of the case, in order to exclude any doubts about bias, even if it is artificially created as in this case, the panel of judges stated.
We recall that on September 12, the Sofia City Court remanded the mayor of Varna in custody. The decision was not final and was therefore subject to appeal before the Sofia Court of Appeal.
A few days ago, his defense asked the magistrates to release him.
Blagomir Kotsev was detained in early July, and the charge against him is participation in an organized criminal group for the purpose of bribery. Two municipal councilors were also detained with him, but so far there is no evidence that they are requesting a change in their detention measures.
Kotsev's defense requested that he be released from custody because, according to the lawyers, in the last 2 months the prosecutor's office and the Anti-Corruption Commission have done nothing substantive for this investigation. His defense attorneys pointed out that only some witnesses who did not say anything new were re-examined, and that documents were seized from the Varna Municipality that had nothing to do with the charges against the mayor.
The prosecutor's office disagreed and pointed out that the case is very complicated and that the charges against Blagomir Kotsev will most likely be refined at a later stage. They also assured that the former deputy mayor of Varna, Dian Ivanov, will be questioned, who initially confirmed the main witness's allegations that a bribe was demanded, and then said on social media that these statements were taken under pressure. However, the court referred to them in its reasoning for why Kotsev will remain in custody.
“I will repeat and emphasize - the prosecution's case does not rest solely on the testimony of Dian Ivanov”, explained prosecutor Velislava Patarinska.