3 Bulgarian Women Claim to Have Been Abused by Spain Police

Three Bulgarian women say they have suffered abuse by Spanish police. Photo by EPA/BGNES

Three Bulgarian women currently kept in jail in Madrid claim they have been the victims of abuse on part of Spanish police officers.

The three women have sent letters to the Bulgarian National Television saying they are being jailed in Spain as suspected drug traffickers but that the evidence against them have been fabricated, and their human rights have been violated.

Two of the women, Maya and Polina, were arrested on February 13, 2010, but the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry has been informed about their detention by the Spanish police only at the beginning of April.

The two women went to Peru as tourists. They were arrested briefly in Lima on charges of trafficking drugs but were released quickly. However, on their way back, the two were arrested at the Madrid Airport.

The women claim their suitcases disappeared, and they were shown large tourist backpacks with some of their belongings stuffed in them, and were told they were trafficking drugs.

“There were ten policemen in the room who were laughing at us, and spoke only in Spanish. There was no interpretor. They did not pay any attention to us, and did not let us get in touch with the Bulgarian Embassy. We were appointed a lawyer, whom we saw only once, and who told us, that if we sign a document, we will be sentenced to 10 years in prison but if we refuse, we will longer terms,” the letter of the two women reads.

Vesela Cherneva, Spokesperson of Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry, said the words of the women have not been verified yet because no one from the Bulgarian Embassy in Madrid had met with them.

Another Bulgarian woman, 21-year-old Snezhana Petrova, in a separate letter to the BNT, has described similar treatment that she received in a Spanish prison where she has been kept for six months already.

Petrova reveals that she had been arrested with half a gram of cocaine, and accused of being a drug trafficker. She claims she had been “treated as an animal”, and that her case is similar to the sage of the Bulgarian nurses who were jailed in Libya for several years till 2007.

Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry has vowed to have its officials meet with the three women, and to clarify the respective circumstances, and the truthfulness of their claims.

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