TSARIGRADSKA AND OTHERS v. BULGARIA

Published on 27 October 2025

THIRD SECTION

Application no. 25072/24
Vladislava Aleksandrova TSARIGRADSKA and Others
against Bulgaria
lodged on 22 August 2024
communicated on 6 October 2025

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1.  The first applicant is a judge; she is currently also a member of the managing board of the Bulgarian Judges Association (the main professional organisation of the country’s judges). The other three applicants are her children, two of whom are still minors.

2.  The first applicant has on many occasions since 2019 expressed publicly, including in interviews to the media, her views about various issues relating to the functioning of the judiciary in Bulgaria.

3.  In October 2019 a Mr M.B. pressured the first applicant to withdraw from a case in which she was sitting and to which he was party. She refused, and in January 2020 Mr M.B. threatened her and her family in relation to that. The first applicant alerted, in particular, the Minister of Justice, and, as a result, between January and July 2020 the Ministry of Justice was providing security guards for her and her home.

4.  According to the applicants, Mr M.B. was a member of a gang for influencing the judiciary and the prosecuting authorities for nefarious purposes, which consisted of, among others, high-ranking prosecutors. In January 2022 and July 2023 the first applicant urged the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Minister of Justice to investigate that possibility.

5.  It appears that in 2022 and 2023 criminal investigations were opened into the activities of the alleged gang of which Mr M.B. was a member and its possible links with public prosecutors, and into Mr M.B.’s threats. Those investigations are apparently still ongoing.

6.  On 31 January 2024 Mr M.B. was shot and killed. Following his murder, allegations were again made that he had been a member of a gang for influencing the judiciary and the prosecuting authorities. Between February and April 2024 the Bulgarian Parliament carried out a public inquiry into the matter. On 22 February 2024 the first applicant gave evidence to that inquiry.

7.  In the wake of media interviews on 18 and 19 February 2024 in which the first applicant made allegations of misuse of office by high-ranking prosecutors and a failure to investigate those, between 19 and 25 February 2024 a number of emails containing detailed and specific death threats against her and her children (the remaining three applicants) were received at the official email address of the regional court where she now sits. The court’s president alerted the police.

8.  On 29 February 2024 the police stated that the threats had been made by a homeless man with mental health conditions; he was arrested on the same day. In March 2024 the competent court placed him in psychiatric detention for three months. Meanwhile, the first applicant expressed doubt that the threats had emanated from him alone. The criminal investigations into those threats, opened in late February 2024, are still ongoing.

9.  Starting from 13 February 2024, the Ministry of Justice again provided security guards for the first applicant. On 12 November 2024 that protection was discontinued.

10.  The four applicants complain under Article 2, in the alternative under Article 8, of the Convention that the authorities did not take effective measures to protect their lives despite the threats against them, in particular those in February 2024. They take issue, in particular, with the alleged failure of the authorities to investigate properly who stood behind those threats. The applicants also complain under Article 13 of the Convention that they had no effective remedies in respect of those omissions.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1.  Has there been a breach of Article 2 of the Convention? In particular, were the authorities under an obligation to take measures to protect the applicants’ lives, by placing them under protection and by investigating effectively the origin of the threats against them? If so, did the authorities duly comply with that duty? In the alternative, to the extent that the concept of “private life” within the meaning of Article 8 of the Convention includes a person’s physical and psychological integrity, has there been a breach of that provision on account of the above-mentioned matters?

2.  Has there been a breach of Article 13 of the Convention? In particular, did the applicants have effective remedies in respect of the alleged failures of the authorities to take the above-mentioned measures?

Pursuant to Rule 54 § 2 (a) of the Rules of Court, the respondent Government are furthermore requested to:

(a)  set out (in the statement of facts), in chronological order and in detail, the course of all criminal investigations relevant to the threats against the applicants; and

(b)  produce copies of all the material relating to (i) those investigations and (ii) the protection provided to the applicants by the Ministry of Justice.

To facilitate its examination by the Court, that material must be compiled into separate paginated bundles, and be accompanied by schedules setting out (in sequential order) the nature, date, description and page reference of each document.

APPENDIX
(anonymity has been granted to some of the applicants)