Two courts refuse to consider the case on Desislava Ivancheva's request for her conditional early release. The dispute between the courts began on February 10. Then the District Court in Lovech was supposed to rule on her request to be released from prison. Instead, however, the magistrates terminated the proceedings and sent it under the jurisdiction of the District Court in Sliven. Then the District Court in Sliven accepted that it should not hear the case. And so a dispute over jurisdiction was raised, which must be resolved by the Supreme Court of Cassation. However, a recusal at the Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) will further delay the dispute over which court should consider Ivancheva's request for early release. The case at the SCC was assigned to Judge Denitsa Valkova, but she recused herself. The reason for her decision is that 4 years ago she was on the SCC panel, which recused itself from the trial and now finds it appropriate to recuse itself as well. What are we witnessing… Lawyer Kalin Angelov, defense attorney of Desislava Ivancheva, speaks to FACTI.
- Lawyer Angelov, what is Desislava Ivancheva's health condition. Let's start like this?
- Prisons in our country are not famous for their good living conditions in any respect – on the contrary. This, added to the stress of serving the sentence itself, is an ideal environment for the deterioration of the health of those in prison. Often people at large say sarcastically: “Look at these people, how they get into prison and start getting sick!“ Unfortunately, they themselves do not suspect how painful the truth is in this. Desislava Ivancheva probably had her health problems before prison, but in Sliven they began to seriously worsen. In her case, they are related to a microadenoma in the brain, the condition of her teeth and lungs, but it is unethical for me to discuss them in detail, and I am not a medical specialist.
The prison in Sliven does not have a hospital, there is an inpatient ward. There is a doctor who visits the prisoners on a certain schedule and the treatment of diseases is carried out by external specialists. In the city itself (without wanting to offend anyone) there are not so many of them, and this forces people to be sent for treatment elsewhere. The same thing happened to Ms. Ivancheva.
She had to come to Sofia for treatment several times.
However, this was done with the so-called “interruption of the sentence“ – i.e. with a decree of the prosecutor's office, the prisoner's sentence stops running and he is released for a specific purpose – in her case, to receive treatment.
However, this also creates a problem, because the sentence itself is extended.
Thus, Ms. Ivancheva has a total of 48 days of interruption, during which she was a prisoner, but her sentence did not run. All her interruptions were due to her health condition. In this regard, and on the recommendation of medical specialists, at the end of November last year, Ms. Ivancheva was sent by the General Directorate “Execution of Sentences“ (GDIN) to serve her sentence in the prison of the city of Lovech. There is a hospital with a pulmonary department. There, at least nominally, they can provide some care for her health while she is serving her sentence.
- What is the level of the hospitals in the prison?
- I will allow myself to quote part of a report by the Ombudsman of the Republic of Bulgaria from a few years ago, which concerns the hospital in the Lovech Prison, where in addition to a pulmonary department there is also a psychiatric one: “… the hospital has neither a psychiatrist nor a pulmonary specialist“. This is from 2019, and by 2022 the problem had not yet been resolved. Hopefully now - in 2025, they will have fixed it.
In fact, the hospitals in the prison suffer from a severe shortage of qualified medical staff, have scarce, depreciated equipment and harsh living conditions. Of course, one could argue that this is the level of hospitals outside prisons as well, but I think that the people who say this have no idea what they are talking about.
Despite improvements in living conditions in recent years, misery still reigns in Bulgarian prisons
and it is much greater than what we are used to outside.
- Now two courts are refusing to consider her request for early release. Why and what is happening?
- What we feared when we filed the application for Conditional Release (CPR) is happening.
Courts in our country have a tendency to throw around “hot potatoes“ and look for an opportunity to get rid of cases.
Precisely because we wanted to avoid this, we submitted the application through the Directorate of Prisons and Detention, in order to give the prison administration the opportunity to assess where it should be sent. From there, they made the correct decision for me that the competent court is the one in Lovech. In fact, in the court session on February 10 of this year, there was no dispute between us and the prison on this issue. Ms. Ivancheva was transferred to Lovech by order and this is not a temporary, but a permanent situation. Until another order is issued for her transfer to another prison, the competent court is the one in Lovech. Of course, this is my legal logic. Let's see what our supreme judges will say.
However, the more problematic thing is something else. The court received the application for early release with the documentation on January 24. If it considered that it was not competent to hear the case, who needed to wait until the open court session on February 10? And with the summons, with Mrs. Ivancheva being escorted, with my trip to Lovech… Instead, we are already at the end of February and waiting for the Supreme Court of Cassation to decide who will hear this case on the merits! As much as I don’t want to, we have to admit that this is some additional and completely unnecessary harassment of those little and most wretched in our society – the prisoners. A country whose institutions have been beating their chests so much in recent years for “traditional“ and “Orthodox“, seems to have forgotten that order ““I was in prison, and you didn’t visit me“.
- When it comes to a case on the merits, it has to go through two instances. And Ivancheva has about a year left, which means that her sentence will have been served?
- Well, with this delay and while this “ping-pong“ is going on between the courts… In case the application for early release is rejected, there is a real danger of this. Added to this is the fact that
Ms. Desislava Ivancheva is not able to work in the hospital – (there is simply no staff for a woman to work there).
This means that she cannot reduce her sentence according to the rule that two working days are considered three days served… So - yes, the situation does not look rosy…
- This is the second application for early conditional release. How was the first one rejected…
- I did not participate as a lawyer in the previous proceedings and I only see it as documents. It was rejected with the standard reasons that Ms. Ivancheva has not yet provided sufficient evidence of her reformation. However, a lot of time has passed since then, the regime of serving the sentence was changed from “strict“ to “general“ and with magnificent motives for her good work. She also received awards. Therefore, I believe that she has actually already fulfilled what was set for her as tasks and I sincerely hope that the court will take this into account. But let's first see when and where we will plead for this.
- The other convict in the case, Bilyana Petrova, was released early from prison 11 months before the end of her sentence. How did things develop with her…
- She had taken all her steps and even the prison administration itself did not oppose the request, but supported it. Then, however, the prosecutor from the Sliven District Prosecutor's Office decided that he would protest, then we went through some purely administrative ups and downs and the case dragged on for about a month and a half until it reached the Court of Appeal in Burgas and until that court made a final decision. I can only imagine how difficult this expectation was for Bilyana Petrova. Her health was very damaged at the time. However, Bilyana is a fighter – she persevered. I hope Desislava will succeed too.