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Ivan Iliev at his arrest 1 year ago
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The court: There is no evidence that they passed on state secrets
After 1 year in custody, all the defendants are at home
Their rights were violated during the investigation
The case was returned to the state prosecution
All the accused from the largest spy group caught in our country are free, an inspection of “24 hours” showed. They were released from custody on March 21 this year. by order of the Sofia Military Appellate Court, exactly one year after they were detained during a large-scale operation by the Military Prosecutor’s Office and the State Agency for National Security. Ivan Iliev, his wife Galina and the other 4 have measures of restraint “cash guarantee” of BGN 2,000 for each of them. In addition to being released, the case against former and current servicemen has been returned to the prosecutor’s office. The Military Prosecutor’s Office confirmed this to “24 Chasa” and pointed out that the case has not yet been brought to court for the second time. According to the court, there are violations in the indictment that restrict the rights of the defendants. These are the colonel from the reserve Ivan Iliev, his wife Galina, who according to the investigation passed our state secrets to the Russian embassy, the two acting as of March last year. military intelligence officers Dimitar Vlahov and Dimitar Grahov, the head of a directorate in the Ministry of Defense, Colonel Petar Petrov, and the head of the secret office in the parliament, Lyubomir Medarov. After their detention, diplomats were expelled from the Moscow mission, as in any action against spies in our country. However, none of them is in custody. The latest case is from the beginning of April, when the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office and SANS discovered spies in the agency. One is accused and is free with bail. A month earlier, Reservist Colonel Valentin Tsankov, who is under house arrest, was detained and charged.
However, the largest operation against spies was against Ivan Iliev and his former colleagues, whom he accused of recruiting to leak classified information for a fee. Then the prosecutor’s office announced that it offered them BGN 2-3 thousand per month for the service. Their conversations were also published, as well as video from the offices of the active military, which showed them taking pictures of computer monitors and the amount of money with their phones. The external observation of Ivan Iliev’s wife showed that he often went to the Russian embassy.
According to the Military Court, however, there are no specific facts and circumstances about the accusation against Ivan Iliev that he served in the service of a foreign state, that he was the leader of the espionage group, and for the others – that they were members of the same.
One of the main disputes between the prosecution and the court in the case is the notion of “state secret”. According to the judges, it is not enough to have a security stamp on documents found during the searches, but they must be listed in the Law on the Protection of Classified Information. In addition, they must have been obtained from implicit sources. This was missing in the case and limited the rights of the accused. According to the prosecution, this should be clarified during the trial.
Another reason for the case to be returned for correction is documents in English, which have not been translated into Bulgarian. Otherwise, they were told in detail in the indictment, but according to the law, each of them must be translated exactly into Bulgarian and certified.
The six have not been ordered to be indicted because of the classified information, which according to the court is also a violation and needs to be corrected. Thus, Ivan Iliev and the others were deprived of the opportunity to understand what they were accused of, which is a constitutional right.
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