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I have not committed any violation of the law. In cases that required official contacts with foreign diplomats in our country, I strictly adhered to the legal powers of the Attorney General and to Bulgarian national interests.
This was stated by former chief prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov in a position provoked by the publication in SPIEGEL magazine entitled “How the Bulgarian Prime Minister Borissov became a servant of Erdogan.”
We publish the full text of Tsatsarov’s position, distributed today by the KPKONPI press center:
“In March 2016, the Sofia City Court did not allow the extradition of the Turkish citizen Abdullah Buyuk, at the request of the competent authorities of the Republic of Turkey. The decision of the Sofia City Court was confirmed by the Court of Appeal from Sofia. European arrest warrant, the request from the requesting state is sent to the Supreme Cassation Prosecutor’s Office, which must detain the person for a maximum of 72 hours and send the file to the corresponding district attorney / in the case of Buyuk – Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office / Custody and examination of the case by the court, in two instances, with the participation of a prosecutor, as is the case with any extradition request, including that relating to Buyuk.
Later, after the attempted coup in the Republic of Turkey, at the request of the ambassador of this country in our country, my meeting with him was held in the Judicial Chamber. In the course of the conversation, I held the firm position that a new request from the Turkish side for the extradition of Abdullah Buyuk on the same grounds is inadmissible. The proposal for a visit to Sofia / the Supreme Cassation Prosecutor / the Turkish magistrates to discuss the Buyuk case was rejected.
Similar meetings with foreign diplomats accredited in our country have been held on the occasion of many other cases related to the legal powers of the prosecution in the field of international legal assistance.
In August 2016, Abdullah Buyuk was handed over to the Turkish authorities in accordance with an order issued as a coercive administrative measure by the Ministry of the Interior on the basis of the Aliens Law of the Republic of Bulgaria. On this occasion, Interior Minister Rumyana Bachvarova told the media that the reason for Buyuk’s extradition was “the lack of valid documents” and that “he entered Bulgaria at the beginning of February with invalid documents.” Previously, the Vice President of the Republic of Bulgaria rejected the Turkish citizen’s asylum application in Bulgaria.
Neither I, as the chief prosecutor at that time, nor the prosecution participated in this procedure. The handover of Buyuk to the Turkish authorities was carried out in accordance with the Aliens Act of the Republic of Bulgaria and not through extradition. The SPIEGEL article is preceded by a publication with identical content and documents in Club Z / “Bulgaria and the hunt for gulenists”, 15 – 16.07.2020, author Dimitar Ganev /. Without commenting on the purposes of these posts and the manner of their transmission in the mentioned Bulgarian media, I can clearly say that I have not committed any violation of the law. In this and other similar cases, which required official contacts with foreign diplomats in our country, I have strictly adhered to the legal powers of the Attorney General and to Bulgarian national interests. “
