Communicated on 14 April 2014

FOURTH SECTION

Application no. 81260/12 Vasil Asenov HRISTOV against Bulgaria lodged on 11 December 2012

STATEMENT OF FACTS

The applicant, Mr Vasil Asenov Hristov , is a Bulgarian national who was born in 1946 and lives in Oryahovo .

A. The circumstances of the case

The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.

On 13 June 2002 the applicant, his son and his brother were attacked by a group of men and severely beaten with bats and metal rods. The applicant was left unconscious, with a cranio -cerebral trauma and a broken skull and also with a dislocated joint of one of the fingers, two intermediate bodily injuries under Bulgarian law, which necessitated his hospitalisation for several days. The other men received lesser injuries.

On an unspecified date the police opened criminal proceedings, which were stayed and then resumed on several occasions. On 18 February 2009 the case was sent to the prosecution with a proposal to indict two of the attackers. On 2 December 2009 the District Public Prosecutor ’ s Office in Oryahovo indicted the two men, after having separated the materials concerning the remaining attackers, who had not been identified, into a new case.

On 20 April 2012 the Oryahovo District Court convicted the two perpetrators for having caused bodily harm to the applicant and ordered them to pay him 10,000 Bulgarian levs for non-pecuniary damage.

Upon an appeal, the above judgment was quashed on 9 October 2012 by the Vratsa Regional Court which, considering that the procedure had been flawed by a number of procedural breaches at the pre-trial and the trial levels, remitted the case to the prosecution. In particular, it noted that the prosecutors had failed to describe accurately in the indictment the relevant factual circumstances and the role played by each of the accused, seeing that there had been other unidentified persons participating in the attack. In addition, the District Court had not examined some discrepancies in the evidence collected and its reasoning had not been thorough and consistent.

Following the judgment above the Oryahovo District Public Prosecutor ’ s Office reintegrated to the case file the materials concerning the unidentified attackers, separated earlier. Considering that the case could only be properly examined once all perpetrators were identified and accused, in a decision of 3 December 2012 the prosecutor in charge ordered the stay of the criminal proceedings. He instructed the head of the local police directorate to continue the search of the remaining perpetrators.

Upon an appeal by the applicant, on 18 December 2012 the Oryahovo District Court upheld the decision to stay the proceedings. It is unclear whether the proceedings have been resumed after that date.

B. Relevant domestic law

1. Limitation period for the prosecution of criminal offences

Under Bulgarian law (Articles 80 § 1 (3) and 81 § 3 of the Criminal Code), the limitation period for prosecuting the offence of causing intermediate bodily injury is ten years. Each act of criminal prosecution carried out by the competent authorities in relation to the alleged offender interrupts the limitation period and restarts the running of time. Such interruptions notwithstanding, the alleged offender can no longer be prosecuted if more than fifteen years have elapsed since the commission of the offence.

2. Limitation period for tort claims

All tort claims are extinguished with the expiration of five years after the commission of the tort or the discovering of the tortfeasor (sections 110 and 114(3) of the Obligations and Contracts Act). By section 115(1 )( g) of the Act, time ceases to run during the “pendency of the judicial proceedings relating to the [tort] claim”. However, section 116(b) provides that the running of time is not to be considered to have ceased where a tort claim which has been brought was not allowed by the courts.

COMPLAINTS

The applicant complains, relying on Articles 5, 6 and 13 of the Convention, that the authorities failed for a lengthy period of time to convict and punish the perpetrators of the attack against him. He considers that this was done with the aim of having the relevant prescription periods expire, thus rendering the prosecution impossible and preventing him from obtaining adequate redress.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Having regard to the procedural protection from inhuman or degrading treatment (see, for example, Nikolay Dimitrov v. Bulgaria , no. 72663/01, § § 63-69, 27 September 2007 ), was the investigation by the domestic authorities of the 2002 beating of the applicant in breach of Article 3 of the Convention?

2. Did the applicant have at his disposal an effective domestic remedy for his complaint under Article 3, as required by Article 13 of the Convention? In particular, did he remain entitled to pursue his civil claim for damages against the identified attackers following the case ’ s remittal by the Vratsa Regional Court ? Can he otherwise obtain damages for his beating in 2002?

The parties are requested to provide detailed information on the course of the criminal proceedings concerning the applicant ’ s beating.