A Bulgarian military court has acquitted three policemen, charged with torturing into confessions a defendant in the trial over the murder of former Prime Minister Andrey Lukanov.

The legal proceedings against Iliya Antonov, Stefan Gurov and Kiril Penkov were launched by Yurij Lenev, one of the five defendants fully and definitively cleared in the middle March this year of charges of killing former Bulgarian PM Andrey Lukanov.

Sofia military-appellate court decided on Tuesday that Antonov did not perpetrated a crime, while the actions of Penkov and Gurov can't be described as such.

The ruling of the court is final and is not subject to appeal.

Lenev was arrested on June 1, 1999, nearly three years after Lukanov was shot dead, and taken to what was later described as "the house of the horrors" in the town of Koprivshtitsa. The developments that unfolded inside the house were described by the court as an attempt to "respect Lenev" in line with the law.

Two Ukrainians - Alexander Russov and Alexey Kichatov, Bulgarian construction entrepreneur Angel Vassilev, his nephew Georgi Georgiev and his driver Yuri Lenev were sentenced to life imprisonment at the end of November 2003.

The life sentences of the defendants were reversed at the beginning of June last year by Sofia Court of Appeals.

Bulgaria's former Prime Minister Andrey Lukanov was killed on 2 October 1996 in front of his Sofia home. He was a member of the Moscow-trained Bulgarian communist elite, served as government head from the Socialist Party from 1989 to 1990. At the time of the murder Lukanov was a lawmaker for his party.