A Bulgarian court has violated the right to a fair trial and the right to freedom of expression of journalist Rosen Bosev, who was convicted of defamation in a criminal case five years ago, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on June 4.
Bosev was found guilty of defamation and fined 500 euros ($543) in May 2019 by the Sofia City Court (SGS) presided over by Judge Petya Kruncheva in a case filed by the former chairman of Bulgaria's Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) Stoyan Mavrodiev.
Mavrodiev had sued Bosev after the journalist said while interviewing him on television that the former had facilitated the laundering of a sum of money obtained through drug trafficking and had used his FSC position to pressure two publications financially through fines, namely the Capital Weekly and the Dnevnik daily, which are owned by the same publisher.
Bosev at the time was a Capital Weekly employee.
Kruncheva ruled that Bosev was guilty of defamation because Mavrodiev had not been convicted in the money laundering case to which the reporter referred to and that the heavy fines imposed on the two publications had not been signed by Mavrodiev, but by his deputy.
During the trial, Kruncheva rejected requests by Bosev's defense that she recuse herself from the case because of suspicions of impartiality since Bosev had repeatedly criticized her professional performance in past articles.
After Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov refused Bosev's request to order a review of the case, the journalist and his defense team filed the case at the ECHR.
In their June 4 decision, ECHR judges ruled that "under the specific circumstances of the case, the applicant may have objective and well-founded doubts about the impartiality with which Petya Kruncheva will exercise [their] functions in the context of considering the appeal he filed against the sentence passed by the court of first instance."
The ECHR concluded that the decision of the court in the city of Sofia was not made by an impartial court, therefore "the restriction imposed on the applicant's right to freedom of expression, protected by Article 10 of the [European] Convention [of Human Rights], was therefore not accompanied by effective and adequate guarantees against arbitrariness."
The Strasbourg-based ECHR awarded Bosev 511 euros ($550) as compensation for a fine imposed on him and 3,000 euros ($3,260) as compensation for moral damages.