CASE OF KIRIL ANDREEV v. BULGARIA
Violation of Article 5 - Right to liberty and security (Article 5-1 - Lawful arrest or detention;Procedure prescribed by law)
André Potocki;Angelika Nußberger;Carlo Ranzoni;Erik Møse;Khanlar Hajiyev;Síofra O’Leary;Yonko Grozev
5. The applicant was born in 1980 and lives in Pleven. 6. On 25 April 2012 he was arrested in Sofia and subsequently charged with the unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition. He remained in detention on remand throughout the pre-trial proceedings. Eventually he entered into a plea agreement with the prosecution, acknowledging that he had committed the offence he had been charged with and accepting a suspended sentence of two years’ imprisonment. 7. The plea agreement was approved at a court hearing before the Sofia District Court on 7 June 2012. The court’s decision was final. At the end of the hearing, at 5.16 p.m., the court ordered the discontinuation of the applicant’s pre-trial detention. 8. After the hearing the applicant was brought to the Sofia Investigative Service, where his pre-trial detention was formally discontinued at about 7 p.m. However, he was not released but was instead taken to a police station, where he remained throughout the night and the next day. On the morning of 9 June 2012 he was transferred to the city of Pleven where, by an order issued at 12.10 p.m., he was once again formally placed in police custody. That measure was taken in the context of another set of criminal proceedings against the applicant which had been instigated in April 2012. On 10 June 2012 the investigator in charge of that case brought charges against the applicant in connection with another count of unlawful possession of firearms. 9. In the proceedings before the Court, the Government submitted an order dated 8 June 2012, issued by the investigator in charge of the case in Pleven and requiring that the applicant be taken by the police to appear before her in order to have charges brought against him. The order referred, in particular, to Article 71 §§ 1, 2 and 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (see paragraph 12 below) and, by way of justifying the need to bring the applicant by force, stated that there was a risk of his absconding. The Government explained that by the time that order had been received by the police in Sofia, it had become impossible to organise the applicant’s transfer to Pleven the same day. That is why the applicant had been kept in the police station overnight and was only transported to Pleven the next day, 9 June 2012.