site.btaCourt Sentences Bulgarian to Seven Years in Prison for Travelling to Syria to Engage in Jihad

The Sofia City Court has found a Bulgarian guilty of traveling to Syria to engage in jihad, the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office said. The verdict is not final and is subject to appeal. The defendant was sentenced to seven years behind bars.

According to the case, the defendant lived with his mother, father and sister in Bulgaria, where he completed his secondary education. In March 2020, when he was 20 years old, he went to France to live with his uncle, with whom he lived for some time. He found a job and established contacts with extremist individuals, and was placed in an environment which had a radical impact on him.

According to the prosecution service, the young man gradually became radicalised to the point of perceiving most people as "infidels". He told his friends that he wanted to go to Syria and join the ranks of terrorist organisations, where he would help people, women and children, alongside groups of men in Syria and fight against the "infidels".

After he returned to Bulgaria, his relatives noticed a change in his behaviour.

In 2021, he arranged to travel to Turkiye  and left a friend a handwritten letter in Turkish addressed to his parents, with the instruction that it be delivered to them three days after he left. In it, he stated his intention to join a terrorist organisation to help those in need in the fight against 'infidels'. It was clear from the contents of the letter that the defendant was religiously radicalised.

In June, the defendant crossed the border by bus through the Malko Tarnovo checkpoint, arrived in Istanbul, and looked for a mosque and a place where he could catch a bus to the town of Hatay, which is near the border with Syria. The young man subsequently contacted his mother via a social networking site and told her that he was in Syria, after which he stopped communicating with her.

In June of 2021 the defendant's parents travelled to Turkiye and told the local police authorities everything. The defendant was identified and placed in a repatriation centre in Hatay for "violating a prohibited military zone", for which the Bulgarian authorities were informed. In August of 2021, he was handed over by the Turkish authorities to the Bulgarian authorities at the Malko Tarnovo checkpoint.