What must happen for a prison warden to lose his position and three prison guards to be put on trial? If you ask Dimitar Raichev, he would most probably say that the answer is the internet.

On March 22, Raichev was dismissed from his position as head of Sofia Central Prison (SCP) because of mobile phone footage made public on the internet. The footage could have been just one of the thousands of others uploaded from the global network, but in Raichev’s case, it was footage showing several inmates performing humiliating sexual acts. The footage showed inmates being led on leashes like dogs, made to stage dog-like fights and perform homosexual acts.

The footage naturally caused a public uproar about prison conditions in Bulgaria and lack of control in the facilities. The scandal gained speed and forced Justice Minister Georgi Petkanov to launch an investigation into the SCP. The investigation resulted in Raichev’s dismissal.

The scandal led to questions about the state of prisons in Bulgaria, particularly in view of the country’s scheduled accession to the European Union on January 1 2007. Another concern was the level of control in prison facilities and over relations between prison guards and prisoners, especially when it turned out that the footage was shot in the absence of the guards.

Right after the footage was made public and was picked up by several local television stations, Petkanov said that people in prison formed a special society that lived by its own rules, often incomprehensible to the outside world.

Petkanov went even further, saying that “such scenes are something normal for the prison environment, generally speaking”.

That was not what was reported in the local media. On March 22, Stanimir Petrov from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, an NGO dealing with human rights, told a news agency that the footage was portrayed major abuses of human rights. According to Petrov, the prisoners were forced to participate in the acts.

“One cannot willingly consent to being led on a dog leash, raped or made to bark,” he said. Petrov called the prison guards negligent for allowing such a spectacle and failing to confiscate mobile phones, which inmates are not allowed to possess.

The same day, Deputy Justice Minister Dimitar Bongalov told Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) that the guards did not coerce any of the prisoners into taking part, and cited one of the inmates as saying that “there was no violence or beatings ... everything was voluntary and just a joke ... we were staging a show”.

However, Sofia Military Court thought otherwise and on March 25 put one of the warders under house arrest and released two other guards on bail “for negligence and allowing violent acts between inmates”.

In the same interview with BNR, Bongalov presented the idea of his ministry to open private prisons. Bongalov said that a public discussion on issues of financing and governing of such prisons would be launched soon. 

According to Petkanov, the ministry was doing its best to prevent such incidents, but it was a matter of money, he said, referring to the low number of surveillance cameras in prisons. Petkov promised thorough checks of all prison facilities.

A day after his dismissal, Raichev also decided to speak. He made his statement while attending a court hearing against the three prison guards accused  of lack of control. Raichev said that his dismissal was no surprise to him. He decided to blame the local media for the scandal, saying that the incident with the footage was reported in a way intended to discredit prison authorities. Raichev said that the men participated voluntarily in the orgy and that some of them were proven recidivists.

However, Raichev admitted that there was a lack of control in the SCP when it came to checking all the mail that goes to the prisoners.

“We do not have enough equipment to check everything that goes in and out of Sofia Prison and sometimes prisoners can have access to mobile phones, money, cigarettes and even bullets,” he said.

Raichev’s confession seemed even stranger when he said that it was almost common practice for relatives, lawyers and even prison guards to smuggle various items inside the prison walls. He added, however, that all prison guards caught doing so had been fired. Raichev presented statistics showing that almost 300 mobile phones were discovered inside Bulgarian prisons every year.

Colleagues of one of the accused prison guards, Evgeni Georgiev, told a Bulgarian news agency that there were cases when mobile phones were smuggled in in cans of shaving cream. Another hit among prisoners were prepaid SIM cards with free-of-charge night calls.

The statements about free access to mobile phones behind bars definitely coincide with some of the theories that followed the most recent high-profile murder in Bulgaria. On February 22, controversial businessman Ivan “The Doctor” Todorov was shot dead in his Porsche Cayenne in a central Sofia neighbourhood.

One of the allegations at the time was that Todorov’s death was organised by the brothers Krassimir and Nikolai Marinovi, known as “The Big and The Little Margin”. This would not be strange, given the brothers’ underworld reputation, if it were not for the fact that they were in prison at the time of Todorov’s murder.

On February 26, Angel Alexandrov, head of the National Investigation Service, told Bulgarian National Radio that this theory “cannot be ruled out”. Communication from prison was not impossible for the brothers, Alexandrov said. The case of last week’s footage appeared to prove Alexandrov right, in that there is something seriously wrong with control in Bulgaria’s prisons.