Strasbourg court rules against Bulgaria in judicial bias case

5 months ago 14

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg has found Bulgaria guilty of violating the right to freedom of expression of investigative journalist Rossen Bossev, who exposed a judge’s bias.

The journalist filed a lawsuit against the state after being convicted of defamation by a Bulgarian judge, after he published several articles containing information questioning the judge’s integrity.

During the trial, the journalist asked Sofia judge Petya Kruncheva to recuse herself from the case, claiming she was biased, but the judge refused and eventually convicted Bossev of defamation.

“The European Court points out painful wounds in Bulgarian society. The protection of freedom of speech and the effective protection of the rights of citizens and journalists are the two issues that are subject to comment in the court decision,” lawyer Alexander Kashumov, who is one of the defenders representing the investigative journalist before the ECHR in Strasbourg, told Euractiv.

The trial is centred on events that took place 11 years ago and symbolises the attempts by state institutions to stifle the Bulgarian media during this period.

In 2013, the news site Dnevnik published information that the then-head of Bulgaria’s Financial Supervision Commission (FSC), Stoyan Mavrodiev, had been called as a witness in a money laundering case, testifying that he had signed documents facilitating the transfer of sums of money that may have been generated by drug trafficking.

Later, investigative journalist Rossen Bossev appeared on two television programmes and talked about Mavrodiev’s possible involvement in the events, as he was himself investigating the scandal.

A few months later, Mavrodiev took the journalist to court for defamation and won a conviction.

Kashumov, the journalist’s lawyer and chairman of the influential Bulgarian NGO Access to Information Programme, added that the Strasbourg court judges seemed “shocked” by Bulgarian judges being allowed to independently judge whether they feel biased.

“The justice delivery system in Bulgaria is undermined when such lack of control is possible,” commented the lawyer.

In his appeal before the Strasbourg court, Bossev describes how the Financial Supervision Commission imposed heavy fines on the independent media group Economedia, which owns the Dnevnik and Capital newspapers. This followed a series of publications by the two media about the chairman of the commission, Stoyan Mavrodiev.

During this time, Bosev was an investigative journalist for Capital, and in 2019, he was convicted of defamation for telling a story on a television programme.

In the latest Reporters Without Borders report, Bulgaria climbed 12 places in the global media freedom rankings but remains at the bottom of the EU countries’ rankings.

The country is now 59th in the ranking, a notable improvement from 2019, when Boyko Borissov’s government was in power, and Bulgaria fell to 111th.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)