Communicated on 21 March 2019
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 32723/12
Milen Bozhidarov STOYKOV
against Bulgaria
lodged on 7 May 2012
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Mr Milen Bozhidarov Stoykov, is a Bulgarian national, who was born in 1985 and is currently serving a sentence in Stara Zagora Prison. He is represented before the Court by Ms P. Stoilova, a lawyer practising in Kazanlak.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
An armed robbery was committed on 7 February 2009 in the city of Stara Zagora and a large sum of money was stolen from the premises of a company. The ensuing investigation led the police to the applicant and two other men.
In the morning of 26 February 2009 masked police officers broke into the applicant’s flat and took him away. During the next hours he was severely ill-treated. The facts have been described in detail in the judgment given in an earlier case brought by the applicant, where the Court found a breach of Article 3 of the Convention, qualifying the ill-treatment suffered by the applicant as torture (see Stoykov v. Bulgaria, no. 38152/11, 6 October 2015).
Later on the same day the applicant was charged with aggravated robbery. After that he was taken before a judge in Stara Zagora, where he gave testimony, in the presence of a lawyer, confessing to having committed the offence at issue together with his two accomplices. He described in detail the preparation they had undertaken and their respective actions on the night of the robbery.
The ensuing criminal proceedings have been described in detail in the Court’s judgment in a case brought by one of the applicant’s co-accused (see Kormev v. Bulgaria, no. 39014/12, §§ 11-22, 5 October 2017).
In particular, during the trial the applicant withdrew his confession, saying that he had been forced by the police into making it, having been beaten before that. The defence’s position after that was that he was not guilty.
In a judgment of 15 May 2010 the Stara Zagora Regional Court convicted the three accused, including the applicant, of aggravated robbery and unlawful possession of firearms. It sentenced the applicant to sixteen and a half years of imprisonment.
The Stara Zagora Regional Court relied on numerous pieces of evidence, including the applicant’s confession made on 26 February 2009. It held in that regard that it had not been established beyond doubt that the applicant had been ill-treated at the time of his arrest and before making the confession, and that in any event this did not entail the untruthfulness of his statements or their inadmissibility as evidence. The facts exposed by him were corroborated by the remaining evidence, he had revealed to the police where the stolen money had been hidden, and had spoken of other circumstances which he could not have been aware of had he not been involved in the robbery.
The applicant’s conviction and sentence were upheld on 21 April 2011 by the Plovdiv Court of Appeal. It held that the Stara Zagora Regional Court had correctly assessed the evidence, and that the rights of the defence had been respected. As to the applicant’s confession made on 26 February 2009, it endorsed the lower court’s analysis, pointing out additionally that the applicant had made that confession before a judge, with all procedural guarantees.
In a final judgment of 17 November 2011 the Supreme Court of Cassation dismissed the applicant’s appeal on points of law.
On two subsequent occasions, namely after the Court’s judgment in his first application and after the judgment in the case of Kormev (both cited above), the applicant requested the Chief Public Prosecutor to apply for the re-opening of the criminal proceedings, but to no avail.
COMPLAINTS
Relying on Article 5 § 1(a) and Article 6 §§ 1 and 2 of the Convention, the applicant complains that the criminal proceedings against him were unfair and that his ensuing imprisonment was unlawful, since the domestic courts convicted him on the basis of his confession of 26 February 2009, made under duress and following his ill-treatment by the police.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Did the applicant have a fair hearing in the determination of the criminal charges against him, in accordance with Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, seeing in particular that, in convicting him, the national courts took into account his confession made after he had suffered ill-treatment breaching Article 3 of the Convention (see Stoykov v. Bulgaria, no. 38152/11, 6 October 2015, and Kormev v. Bulgaria, no. 39014/12, 5 October 2017)?
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