ECtHR: Violation of Article 6-2 Presumption of innocence in BANEVI vs. BULGARIA case

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the presumption of innocence had been violated with comments by Ivan Geshev (the then Deputy Chief Prosecutor and Head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office) and the supervising prosecutor in the case, Maria Doycheva. The ECtHR commented on a statement by Geshev and Doycheva made at a press conference on October 28, 2018. According to the court: “[…] the words of the two prosecutors go beyond simply transmitting information about the criminal investigation. In particular, the way in which they described the versions of the investigators’ work and their very clear conclusions as to the facts which were the subject of the investigation conveyed the idea that the two applicants were perpetrators of the crimes for which they were accused by the prosecution. Those comments, taken as a whole, therefore undermine the presumption of innocence of the applicants.” In addition, the ECtHR found a violation of the presumption of innocence in the grounds of the ruling of the Specialized Criminal Court, which ordered the remand of the accused in custody. Full text of the decision is available here.

The article is available only in Bulgarian.