European Court of Human Rights

FIFTH SECTION

PARTIAL DECISION

AS TO THE ADMISSIBILITY OF

Application no. 38454/04
by Tanko Zaprianov TODOROV
against Bulgaria

The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 2 December 2008 as a Chamber composed of:

Peer Lorenzen, President,
Rait Maruste,
Karel Jungwiert,
Renate Jaeger,
Mark Villiger,
Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska,
Zdravka Kalaydjieva, judges,
and Claudia Westerdiek, Section Registrar,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 12 October 2004,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

The applicant, Mr Tanko Zaprianov Todorov, is a Bulgarian national who was born in 1976 and is presently detained in the Plovdiv prison. He is represented before the Court by Ms E. Nedeva, a lawyer practising in Plovdiv.

The circumstances of the case

The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.

On 11 December 1997 the applicant was arrested and on the next day was charged with murder.

On 14 October 1999 the Plovdiv regional public prosecutor’s office filed with the Plovdiv Regional Court an indictment against the applicant on account of murder committed in an especially cruel manner and with extreme ferocity.

On 3 December 2001 the Regional Court acquitted the applicant. He was released from pre-trial detention on an unspecified date.

The length of applicant’s pre-trial detention between 1997 and 2001 and his right to challenge its lawfulness during the same period were the subject of his first application with the Court (Tanko Todorov v. Bulgaria, no. 51562/99), which resulted in a judgment of 9 November 2006 finding violations of Article 5 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.

The reasoning of the Regional Court’s judgment was made available in 2004.

The Plovdiv regional public prosecutor’s office filed an appeal against the acquittal.

On 16 September 2004 the Plovdiv Court of Appeal held a hearing. At its end the court notified the parties that its verdict would be pronounced publicly four days later.

In a judgment of 20 September 2004 the Court of Appeal quashed the lower court’s judgment, sentenced the applicant to seventeen years’ imprisonment and ordered his renewed detention, which, under Bulgarian law, was considered as pre-trial detention pending cassation proceedings.

On 27 September 2004 the applicant lodged a cassation appeal against the judgment of the Court of Appeal and requested the Supreme Court of Cassation to release him. The latter did not rule on his request for release.

On 13 May 2005 the Supreme Court of Cassation quashed the Court of Appeal’s judgment and remitted the case to the Plovdiv Regional Court. It found that by scheduling a hearing to pronounce the judgment before having deliberated in private the Court of Appeal had made it clear that it would quash the Regional Court’s judgment and convict the applicant and had thus demonstrated partiality. Under Bulgarian law judgments whereby lower courts’ judgments are upheld are not pronounced publicly.

The Supreme Court of Cassation also found that the panel, which had examined the case in the Regional Court, had been unlawful as one of its members had already participated in deciding on the applicant’s detention on remand.

On 14 July 2005 the applicant who was still in pre-trial detention requested the Plovdiv Regional Court to release him. In a decision of 19 July 2005 the judge rapporteur refused. Upon appeal by the applicant, the Plovdiv Court of Appeal on 18 August 2005 ordered his release.

After a fresh examination of the case, on 1 December 2005 the Regional Court convicted the applicant and sentenced him to seventeen years’ imprisonment. The time which the applicant had spent in pre-trial detention was deduced from the sentence. In finding that he had murdered his victim in an especially cruel manner and with extreme ferocity, the Regional Court relied on the testimony of an eye-witness and other witnesses, on numerous expert opinions and on other evidence.

On 16 October 2006 and 30 May 2007 the judgment of the Regional Court was upheld by the Plovdiv Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Cassation, respectively.

COMPLAINTS

THE LAW

A.  Complaints under Article 6 § 1 regarding the length of the criminal proceedings and under Article 13 regarding the alleged lack of any effective remedy in that regard

The applicant complained under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that the criminal proceedings against him had lasted unreasonably long and under Article 13 that he had not had an effective remedy in that regard.

Article 6 § 1, in so far as relevant, reads:

“In the determination of ... any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a ... hearing within a reasonable time by [a] ... tribunal ...”

Article 13 reads:

“Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in [the] Convention are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.”

The Court considers that it cannot, on the basis of the case file, determine the admissibility of these complaints and that it is therefore necessary, in accordance with Rule 54 § 2 (b) of the Rules of Court, to give notice of this part of the application to the respondent Government.

B.  The remainder of the applicant’s complaints

The applicant also raised other complaints under Articles 5, 6 and 13. In the light of all the material in its possession, and in so far as the matters complained of are within its competence, the Court finds that they did not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols.

It follows that this part of the application must be rejected as being manifestly ill-founded, pursuant to Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court by a majority

Decides to adjourn the examination of the applicant’s complaints concerning the length of the proceedings and the lack of an effective remedy thereto;

Declares the remainder of the application inadmissible.

Claudia Westerdiek Peer Lorenzen
Registrar President