After the incident with the police director in Ruse caused a stormy public reaction, attention quickly subsided. Advocate Metodi Lalov, who represents one of the young people involved in the case, tells what is happening with the investigation, why the institutions act repressively and why in Bulgaria “non-investigation“ often becomes the norm. Here is what he shared with FACTI.
– Advocate Lalov, the incident with the police chief in Ruse has subsided a bit, but you represent one of the young people. At what stage is the investigation currently?
– You are right that the topic has subsided, although the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Minister Daniel Mitov raised a big public outcry and gave their own versions, which later turned out to be false. The investigation has taken its natural course, but at the moment I can say that there is actually no investigation – there is a delay. This is a case in which there is nothing to clarify and it can actually be concluded within two or three months.
A forensic psychiatric and psychological examination of my client is now being requested to establish whether he was acting in a state of frivolity and infatuation at the time of the incident. This is normal practice, so it is not something extraordinary. But this examination should have been done at the very beginning of the investigation, and not first detaining him and only then establishing what state he was in. The police even tried to make a forensic registration of the young man – take his DNA and fingerprints.
– Why did they try? Is this a practice to do?
– Unfortunately, yes – It is a practice. In Bulgaria, everyone says that it should not be done like this, but in practice this is exactly what happens. Tell me why a young man, a student who lives with his parents, was fingerprinted and asked for a criminal record – as if he had committed a serious crime? The actions of the police were repressive, archaic – in a manner reminiscent of socialist times. More than thirty years have passed since then and such practices should not exist.
The registration they asked him for had neither a public nor a legal necessity. This was not to protect the public interest, but a purely showy act.
– Are we to understand that there is no such registration?
– Yes. On the spot, at the police station, the young man and his mother voluntarily refused to undergo fingerprint registration. Now the police must justify to the court why this registration is necessary and whether it should be carried out. So things are now on a normal footing, because there is a balance between the interests of law enforcement and society.
– And is the fingerprint registration related only to the investigation of this case, or does it generally remain in the person's file?
– It remains in the file. There are problems here, because according to our legislation it lasts forever.
– Even when the person is acquitted?
– Yes, it remains.
– If it happens that the person on whom this data was collected is acquitted, that he has no connection to a given act...
– I'm telling you this. For many years this registration continued to exist. Citizens had difficulty getting it deleted, because it depended on a prosecutor's decision. This is no longer the case – the legislation has changed, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs must delete this unnecessary registration. There is, of course, resistance from the police to this, but things are developing in favor of the people. In this case, such a registration is unnecessary and is unnecessary noise.
– Have you already read the testimony of Commissioner Kozhuharov? Has the factual situation been clarified - who and how struck him?
– I have read the testimony, but they are somewhat contradictory between the individual participants. The bad thing is that I have not yet read the video recordings, which have not been provided to us - even in the cases of measures for the detention of the youth in this case. In this sense, a clear idea of the chronology of events cannot be given. It is the recordings that will give an objective picture of what happened.
These contradictory testimonies are not always the result of malicious intent or lies - The situation is dynamic, everything is developing quickly.
The incident lasts about eight seconds - that's how long the fight lasts.
Then everything quiets down and the police are waiting. There is no beating that lasts minutes - eight seconds of exchanging several blows. I cannot comment on what Commissioner Kozhuharov said or did, but one thing is clear - it is not the young people who intended to beat someone up. This is a case where two adults stop a car, one of them reaches out to the driver, and then - in the framework of inevitable self-defense, from my point of view - the following events develop.
There are many questions that need to be answered: is there inevitable self-defense, is there frivolity and infatuation with the minor accused, who started it first, etc.
I would like, when it comes to a publicly announced case by the state authorities, to use their full potential and close this case within a few weeks. Because there is nothing more to happen here. This is not a financial case or a murder with an unknown perpetrator - the participants are clear. There is a recording, there are testimonies. What else is there to be done? The medical examination of Commissioner Kozhuharov should show what his injuries were. If there is someone guilty - he should be punished. It is slow to act, from my point of view.