would soon be sent for trial. On 8 October 1996 the Regional Prosecutor’s Office dismissed another request for release. 47. On 4 November 1996, a District Court judge sitting in the robbery case examined in camera Mr Assenov’s petition for release. The judge refused to release Mr Assenov, taking into account the seriousness and the number of the crimes with which he had been charged and the fact that the trial would soon commence. 48. In July 1997 Mr Assenov was convicted of four street robberies and sentenced to thirty months’ imprisonment. According to the information available to the Court, he has not yet been indicted in relation to the burglary charges pending against him. C. Events following the application to the Commission 49. The applicants’ complaint was lodged with the Commission on 6 September 1993. In March 1995 they signed before a notary a statement of means, prepared in Bulgarian, referring expressly to their application to the Commission, and stating that it was done for purposes of their legal aid request to the Commission. 50. On 15 May, 23 May and 8 September 1995 two daily newspapers published articles about the case. Two of the articles, under headlines stating that a Roma gambler had “put Bulgaria on trial in Strasbourg”, explained inter alia that, in response to questions from journalists, the applicants had allegedly denied having made an application to the Commission. The articles concluded that perhaps some Roma activists had pushed the case and misled Amnesty International. 51. On an unspecified date the prosecuting authorities or the police approached the applicants and asked them to declare whether they had made an application to the Commission. On 8 September 1995, the second and third applicants visited a notary and signed a declaration in which they denied having made an application to the Commission. They further stated that they remembered having signed, in 1992 and 1993, some documents prepared by human rights associations. However, they had not been given copies of the documents and did not know their contents. One of the documents had been in a foreign language. 52. It would appear that this declaration was then submitted to the prosecuting authorities. On 19 September 1995 the GMPO wrote about it to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 53. The transcript of Mr Assenov’s questioning after his arrest on 28 July 1995 establish that he spoke to the investigator about the events of 19 September 1992, saying: “In 1992 ... I was beaten by policemen ... [at the bus station]. Thereafter I obtained a medical certificate and my father complained to the police. They did not look at it seriously and he submitted it to the Military Prosecution Office. They did not take it seriously either. Then my father heard that there were some people from an international