Bulgarian Interior Minister Rejects Accusations of Police Brutality

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetelin Yovchev has labeled former Deputy PM Tsvetan Tsvetanov's claims of police brutality absurd.

In a Tuesday interview for private TV channel TV7, Yovchev said that he had felt awkward upon hearing such accusations from a person like Tsvetanov.

To illustrate his point about the inappropriateness of Tsvetanov's accusations, he cited a 2010 case of infringed human rights during the detention and home arrest of former Varna municipal councilor Borislav Gutsanov over which Bulgaria had been convicted in Strasbourg.

Minister Yovchev was deputy director of the counterintelligence unit in the cabinet of center-right party Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), according to reports of mediapool.bg.

A week ago in Brussels Tsvetanov accused Bulgarian authorities of using the same repressive methods against protesters, as their Ukrainian colleagues applied against the pro-EU demonstrators. The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the leading force in Bulgaria's coalition government, responded by calling for Tsvetanov's resignation for smearing Bulgaria's reputation.

Minister Yovchev suggested that the allegations of pro-socialist economist Kolyo Paramov that Bulgaria's State Agency for National Security (DANS) was wiretapping former President Georgi Parvanov were ridiculous.

The Interior Minister insisted that the anti-government protests in Bulgaria were not civil protests but rallies organized by political parties.

He argued that the leaders of the protests were manipulating young people into doing things they were not quite aware of, seeking to use them to regain power.

Yovchev emphasized, however, that it was not a job of the Interior to track down the organizers of the rallies.

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