SABEV v. BULGARIA
Inadmissible
George Nicolaou;Guido Raimondi;Krzysztof Wojtyczek;Nona Tsotsoria;Päivi Hirvelä;Yonko Grozev
1. The applicant, Mr Asen Todorov Sabev, is a Bulgarian national who was born in 1977 and is currently serving a life sentence in Sofia Prison. He was represented before the Court by Ms P. Todorova from Pernik. 2 3. In 2001 the applicant was sentenced to whole life imprisonment for robbery and murder. His sentence became final on 17 December 2003, when it was upheld by the Supreme Court of Cassation. The applicant has been serving his sentence in Sofia Prison. 4. On 3 September 2014 the Vice-President of Bulgaria, exercising the constitutional prerogative to grant clemency, commuted the applicant’s whole life sentence to a “simple” life sentence. 5. The law relating to whole life sentences, acts of clemency and adjustment of a sentence, and their applicability to that type of sentence has been set out in detail in Harakchiev and Tolumov v. Bulgaria (nos. 15018/11 and 61199/12, §§ 51-107, ECHR 2014 (extracts)).