The two police officers who detained Yavor Georgiev stood in front of the NOVA camera. Svetlozar Dimitrov and his colleague Ivaylo Nenov told their point of view about the tragic situation with the 36-year-old man from Varna. They claim that they did not lose their temper at any moment.
In “Focus with Lora Krumova” they were guests together with their lawyers Galentin Grozev and Stelyan Lyuboslavov.
The death of the 36-year-old man caused upheaval in the country. First, Varna went on protests demanding justice and insisting that Yavor died as a result of police violence. Dismissals followed at the local police station, police officers were removed, and the chair of the Minister of Internal Affairs Daniel Mitov was shaken.
Both police officers had never had a similar situation in their practice. Svetlozar has been working at the Ministry of Internal Affairs for 6 years, and Ivaylo for 5. They say they are afraid for themselves and their loved ones. When they received the signal about an inadequate person, they traveled in that direction because the batteries of their body cameras had run out and they had to charge them at the Regional Directorate. They parked the patrol car so that the video recorder could record what was happening.
„He said that his mother had been kidnapped from some supposed address of hers, which he could not say. Yavor also said that he had jumped over a fence, saw silhouettes. He said his mother was in the back seat of every car that came to fill up at the gas station,” the police officers say.
The whole time, Yavor talked to his mother on the phone, who explained to him that she was in Shumen and was fine. “However, he doubted whether he was really talking to her and whether we were real police officers,” said Svetlozar Dimitrov. After the conversation with Yavor’s mother ended, the uniformed officers asked the man if he needed anything else, and he replied that he was thirsty. Police officer Nenov went in and bought him water with his own money.
When he took the bottle, the man, who later died, did not drink the water, but poured it over his chest. This led the police to think that there was something worrying about his health and they called an emergency team.
When asked if they denied hitting Yavor Georgiev when he was detained, the now-dismissed police officers said that they had used aids and physical force "within normal limits". "We only used police personal protection methods - nothing more", emphasized Svetlozar Dimitrov and Ivaylo Nenov.
When the medical team came and said that Yavor had to go with them, he started pulling himself up, knocked down the uniformed men and fell with all his weight on one of them. Then the scuffle between them began. "He was taller and bigger than us. "There was no option to act differently," said Svetlozar Dimitrov.