Supreme Court Acquits Bulgarian Wrongly Accused of Robbery

Crime | October 4, 2011, Tuesday // 16:54
Bulgaria: Supreme Court Acquits Bulgarian Wrongly Accused of Robbery Following a prolonged court battle, 27-year-old Maxim Savov was ultimately declared not guilty of a robbery committed in January 2010. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's Supreme Court of Cassation (VKS) has upheld the acquittal of IT specialist Maxim Savov, wrongfully accused of robbing a grocery store in Plovdiv in January 2010.

After a court battle of a year and eight months and 5 months spent under arrest, the 27-year-old Plovdiv citizen was ultimately declared not guilty on Tuesday.

Savov's saga started on January 13 2010, when a shop assistant identified him as the man who had raided the store 8 days earlier.

Magdalina Dimitrova said a man wearing a hood and a baseball cap had stormed into the grocery store, demanding the money from the cash register while pointing a knife at her.

The woman said she had said she had tried to resist the attack but the young man had violently pushed her aside, threatening to kill her.

The robber fled with BGN 484 from the cash register.

A police search of Savov's home yielded shoes, a T-shirt and a knife Dimitrova said belonged to the offender.

Disregarding six alibi witness statements and assertions of Savov's lawyers that he earned over BGN 2000 per month at his job, which they said rendered the robbery pointless, the Plovdiv Regional Court declared Savov guilty and he was given a suspended sentence of three years in prison.

The Plovdiv District Court compared Savov's seized belongings to the ones worn by the robber using security camera footage.

The court of second instance found that the two sets of items did not match and acquitted Savov, citing the illogical and contradictory motives behind the guilty verdict.

Savov has filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights.

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Tags: IT, Plovdiv, Supreme Court of Cassations (VKS), robbery, European Court of Human Rights, suspended sentence

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