Bulgaria’s Interior Minister, Kalin Stoyanov, on Friday called for resignations in the regional police department of Stara Zagora after a man died during an arrest on December 30. 

“We won’t tolerate any instances of unprofessional behaviour and we’ll be uncompromizing when there’s a lack of leadership control, ”Stoyanov said on January 5.

Following alerts about a man armed with a knife and threatening children, officers tried to detain him, but the situation escalated into a race across the town. The alleged perpetrator, 58-year-old Plamen Penev, a former professional wrestler, died shortly after he was taken out of the vehicle. 

Details about his death have been emerging since, with Penev’s family claiming he was “killed” by the police.

“My father was brutally beaten and killed by Stara Zagora officers, the same ones that should protect us,” his daughter Borislava Peneva told bTV channel on December 31, adding that her father was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. In another interview, to Nova TV, Borislava said her father’s body was visibly injured and that police told her he passed away during a road accident, contradicting the later official version. 

According to the police, Penev experienced convulsions upon arrest and died shortly after. “We have not used any aggression,” Lazar Hristov, head of the regional department, said on January 3.

Emanuil Yordanov, a lawyer for the family, told Nova TV on Friday that the medical verdict on the man’s cause of death is yet to be disclosed but added: “The fact that the victim was mentally ill should not be a reason for him being beaten to death.” Yordanov noted that no knife was found in Penev’s possession. 

According to sources quoted in Capital and Sega newspapers on January 4, the medical expertise is likely to point to suffocation as a result of the five officers climbing on the suspect to arrest him. Videos of the arrest, in which the police appear aggressive but Penev is hardly visible, have made their way into social media. 

Stara Zagora is associated with another high-profile case which disturbed the country in July last year, when a brutal attack on an 18-year-old woman prompted protests against domestic and gender-based violence. The attack also triggered law amendments.

Recently, police brutality in Bulgaria has been linked with the heavy-handed curbing of anti-establishment protests, like the demonstrations initiated by football fans in November and the protest wave from 2020-2021 in which journalists were also targeted. 

A recent BIRN analysis pointed out that mental health support, resources and education for police officers across the Balkans are insufficient.