site.btaMontana District Court Refuses to Surrender to Czechia Bulgarian Convicted of Theft There

The Montana District Court has refused to surrender to Czechia a 24-year-old resident of Lom for whom a European Arrest Warrant has been issued, the Court said on Wednesday.

The man, identified by the initials N.B.Ts., is wanted by the Czech judicial authorities to serve there a nine-month prison sentence for theft. After he was not found in Czechia, the person was put on an international wanted list. He was detected in Lom and was detained, and the Montana District Court ordered his indefinite detention. The Court refused to surrender N.B.Ts. to the authorities in Czechia, arguing that he is permanently linked to Bulgaria where he and his family are permanently resident and held that the custodial sentence imposed can be served in Bulgaria.  

The Court told BTA that in recent years it has also examined other similar requests from European and Asian countries for the extradition of Bulgarian citizens from the area or of foreigners resident in Bulgaria who have been wanted by the requesting countries for various criminal offences. In most cases such requests have been granted, when concerning human trafficking, major fraud and theft, homicide, robbery, etc. In some cases, however, the requests have been rejected with the argument that the individual concerned can serve their sentence in Bulgaria or by apprehensions that, if surrendered to another country, mainly in the Arab world, they may be subjected there to groundless politically or religiously motivated persecution.