'Petrich Escobar': Parliament questions prison chiefs over pardon today
At the request of PP, parliament holds an extraordinary sitting from 9 a.m. on medical reports issued before a December 2022 pardon – and a fight in prison 19 days earlier.
Symbolic image · Photo: Miroslav.Nikolov / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Bulgaria's parliament convenes for an extraordinary sitting at 9 a.m. on Tuesday (Oct. 13). Speaker Mihaela Dotsova called it at the request of the We Continue the Change (PP) group; lawmakers from Democratic Bulgaria and GERB backed the request with their signatures, Eurocom reported. The subject is the pardon of Ognyan Atanasov, known as 'Petrich Escobar', who had been sentenced in Greece to 15 years in prison for drug trafficking.
According to BNT, the lawmakers will hear the head of the Chief Directorate for the Execution of Sentences, Ivaylo Yordanov, the head of Sofia Prison, Svetoslav Penov, and the man who ran the prison in November and December 2022. They want to establish how the medical reports and conduct assessments on Atanasov were prepared, checked and passed on.
The pardon decree was signed on Dec. 5, 2022, on the grounds of serious health problems – by Iliana Iotova, then vice president. Mediapool published footage from the prison hospital showing Atanasov in a fierce fight 19 days earlier; according to the outlet, the incident was not recorded in his file. Over the case, PP called on Iotova to withdraw from the presidential race.