The Supreme Court of Cassation upheld a verdict of the Pazardzhik District Court confirmed by the Court of Appeal – Plovdiv, by which the Bulgarian citizens Vasil Atanasov and Jamal Alikov and the Spaniard Fernando Castro were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for armed robbery.
The Pazardzhik District Court found the three defendants guilty of the fact that on 21.12. 2015, in the city of Pazardzhik, in complicity as co-perpetrators, through the use of force and threats, they took away foreign movable property from the possession of various persons with the intention of illegally misappropriating it, the robbery being particularly large-scale, the perpetrators were armed and the same was accompanied by causing medium bodily injuries to one of the victims. The act for the defendants Atanasov and Castro is a dangerous relapse.
The defendants knew that the injured family had money because they had recently sold a Porsche Panamera car, and therefore decided to rob it. They studied in detail the layout of the buildings on the family’s property in Pazardzhik and obtained illegal weapons. The place of the attack was a premises owned by a company that had several buildings and offices. There was also a separate room that was used for a barbecue. In front of the fence, next to the front door of the yard, there was a caravan for the guard of the site. On 21.12.2015, they first attacked the guard of the house. They tied him up with pig tails and taped his mouth shut. Then, masked and armed, they invaded the building where the barbecue was located, where family and relatives were gathered for a meal. The owner’s brother was shot in the leg and arm. They tied everyone up and waited for the daughter to come home with her child. Attacked them too. He took the massive gold jewelry and watches from the men and women and the money they found in the purse of one of the victims. Everything was worth a total of BGN 66,714. Then they fled in a car. A police car patrol stopped them for a check on the way to the Cave, but they drove off in the car while the policemen checked their personal documents, which remained in the hands of the uniformed men. They hid the weapon somewhere by the road and separated. Later, after operational – search activities by the police, they were detained.
The case in the Plovdiv Court of Appeal was initiated in connection with a protest by the District Prosecutor’s Office – Pazardzhik, complaints by private prosecutors and the three defendants. The protest of the prosecutor, as well as the complaints of the private prosecutors and the defendants, are groundless, is the conclusion of the appellate judges after the appeal proceedings, which ended with the confirmation of the 20-year sentences of the three defendants. They were also sentenced to pay a total of BGN 342,465 to the five victims for property and non-property damages.
The Supreme Court of Cassation rejects the protest of the prosecutor’s office, which insists that the three defendants be sentenced under the more serious legal qualification – for armed robbery, accompanied by an attempt to kill Todor Nikolov, but pleads in a courtroom to confirm the imposed penalties of 20 years of deprivation of liberty freedom. The Supreme Court also dismissed the appeals of the private prosecutors, who insisted on changing the qualifications and life sentences of the three defendants. The cassation instance states that the conclusion of the additional medical examination in the case confirms the severity and nature of the damage caused to the left limb of the injured Nikolov, which was determined to be a medium bodily injury, and it is not established that as a result of the injuries received, it occurred immediate danger to the victim’s life, which is why in this case the established mechanism of causing the injuries – to neutralize the victim’s resistance and intimidation, their nature and severity do not point to a formed direct intent to kill the victim. “The Plovdiv Court of Appeal has presented extremely detailed reasons on the question of the punishment that should be imposed on the three defendants, on the one hand as a type of punishment and on the other as a corresponding weight of the chosen type of sanction that it determined. The Supreme Court agrees with the opinion of the supervised appellate court that of the three alternative punishments for the crime for which the defendants were found guilty under Art. 199, para. 2 of the Criminal Code, the most appropriate type of punishment to achieve the goals under Art. 36 of the Criminal Code and maximum adequate to the gravity of the committed act is the punishment of deprivation of liberty, which determines the unfoundedness of the request in the appeals of the private prosecutors to cancel the appeal decision and return the case for a new examination in order to impose a more severe punishment , namely life imprisonment,” the decision of the supreme magistrates says. They accept as correct the judgment of the Plovdiv appellate judges that the overall character of the three defendants, the gravity of the act, considered together with the previous convictions of the defendants, requires more intense coercion and that the objectives of the punishment against them cannot be effectively achieved with imposing a lesser penalty. The overall assessment of the circumstances of the case, which exceed the scope of the usual public danger for crimes against property, were correctly taken into account as an argument in the direction of the need for a maximum length of imprisonment to achieve the effect intended by the criminal repression, therefore they are not in this case there are grounds for greater leniency towards the perpetrators. For the stated reasons, the complaints about the manifest injustice of the punishments of the three defendants were accepted as groundless and their appeals to reduce the amount of the imposed prison sentences were disregarded, therefore they should serve a punishment in the maximum amount provided by law of 20 years imprisonment.
The decision of the Supreme Court of Cassation is final.
