site.btaUPDATED Journalist Dimitar Stoyanov Released from Custody, Charged with Hooliganism, Murder Threat with Firearm

The Sofia Regional Prosecutor's Office announced that it has charged journalist Dimitar Stoyanov (referred to in the announcement by his initials) with  hooliganism and making murder threat with a firearm. The Sofia Regional Court released Dimitar Stoyanov from custody because he had been available for 18 hours, but no procedural-investigative actions were conducted with him, the press release said.

The Interior Ministry said Tuesday morning that Stoyanov had been detained for 24 hours for hooliganism and threat with weapon. The arrest was carried out following a citizen's alert to the police. The Interior Ministry has provided a video that shows Stoyanov taking out a gun and pointing it at a person. 

On his Facebook profile, Stoyanov wrote that he had been attacked while shopping. 

Dimitar Stoyanov is a journalist at the Bureau for Investigative Reporting and Data (BIRD.bg). He is one out of two BIRD journalists against whom caretaker Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov filed a criminal defamation lawsuit on April 15. The Interior Minister demands BGN 65,000 (EUR 33,300) in damages over the two journalists' articles, social media posts and media appearances reporting on his alleged connections to Martin "the Notary" Bozhanov. 

Bozhanov was shot dead in a gated complex in a Sofia suburb on the evening of January 31. According to media reports, he was a large-scale fixer of people's problems with the Judiciary. He has been implicated in building a network of connections with prosecutors and judges whom he allegedly bribed, threatened, blackmailed or otherwise pressured to treat his "clients" favourably.

In posts on social media, Atanas Chobanov, the chief investigative reporter at BIRD, makes a connection between Stoyanov's arrest and a BIRD investigation into a hushed-up extortion probe against a former National Revenue Agency officer who is brother-in-law of the Interior Minister.

So far in the course of the investigation, witnesses have been interviewed and searches have been carried out at the suspect's home, during which two pistols and a carbine were found and seized, the press release said. A supervising prosecutor has ordered three forensic examinations - video-technical, ballistic and forensic. Bail in the amount of BGN 5,000 has been set for Stoyanov.