The Murder of Annie Borisova

A four-year-old in central Athens

Ani Borisova, usually spelled Anny in Greek reporting, was four years old and came from a Bulgarian family living in the centre of Athens. Her mother, Dimitrina Borisova, was 25 in 2015, and her father, Stanislav Bakardzhiev (rendered in Greek as Bakartziev and known to friends as Savvas), was 27. Both were Bulgarian nationals. According to the Hellenic Police, the mother flew to Germany shortly before Easter 2015 and left the girl with her father, who lived in a basement flat on Michail Voda Street. She came back to Greece on 21 April.

Police later concluded that the child had been killed on 8 or 9 April 2015, about two weeks before she was reported missing. Investigators said in their official statement that her remains would almost certainly never be found.

A disappearance that did not add up

On 21 April the couple visited the child-welfare charity The Smile of the Child but, according to Proto Thema, did not formally report the girl missing. They did so three days later, on 24 April, at the Omonia police station, and the case was entered into the Amber Alert system. Their stories shifted repeatedly. The mother first said she had left Ani with another Bulgarian woman who had lost her in a park. The father said he woke on the morning of 19 April to find the child gone, later hinted that the mother might take her away with another man, and both eventually suggested the girl had run off. The parents also travelled to Bulgaria, saying they wanted to break the news to relatives in person.

The search drew intense coverage in Greece. Police followed false leads, including a woman and child found in Nikaia whom the mother wrongly identified as Ani. The father was questioned early on and released for lack of evidence.

How police solved the case

The breakthrough came when a friend of the couple told police that the father had confided in him during a visit to Bulgaria in late April. Officers searched the basement flat and found the child's blood on seized items and inside the apartment. On 4 May 2015 the case was announced as a homicide and the father was arrested; the mother was detained the same evening on a warrant for exposing a minor to danger. Police said they did not believe she had taken part in the killing. Both were brought before a prosecutor on 5 May amid angry crowds.

The father admitted hiding and disposing of his daughter's body but has always denied killing her. He said he had been using drugs, woke to find her dead and panicked, and suggested she might have swallowed drugs left in the home. The courts did not accept that account.

First-instance trial, 2016

The trial opened on 5 September 2016 before the Mixed Jury Court of Athens. Alongside the parents sat Nasif Ahmedov, 30, known as Nikolai, a friend of the father who at times stayed at the Michail Voda flat; he was charged with the same murder and corpse-desecration offences as the father. On 11 October 2016 the court sentenced both men to life imprisonment. Appeal-stage reporting gives the full first-instance terms as life plus three and a half years for the father and life plus three years for Ahmedov, with deportation to follow any release. The mother received six years, suspended, for exposing her child to danger; To Vima reported that two of the judges had favoured acquitting her. A fourth defendant received 12 months for perjury. To Vima described that person as the owner of the flat, while CNN Greece's trial preview described the perjury defendant as a friend of the mother.

The 2019 appeal

Under Greek procedure the case was reheard in full by the Mixed Jury Court of Appeal of Athens. In February 2019 the father again denied murder. On 17 April 2019 the court found him guilty of intentional homicide, a weapons offence and desecration of a corpse and sentenced him to life imprisonment plus two years. Ahmedov's life term was replaced with nine years after the court accepted that he had shown genuine remorse, and reports at the time said he was expected to be released soon, given the time he had already spent in custody. The mother was acquitted.

We searched Greek and international reporting for later developments, such as a further challenge before the Supreme Court (Areios Pagos) or applications for early release, and found none reported between late 2024 and November 2026.

Legal and regional context

The case is one of the child killings most often recalled in Greek media retrospectives. It also shows how Greek criminal justice handles serious crimes. Felonies such as homicide go to mixed courts, where professional judges and lay jurors decide guilt and sentence together, and an appeal is a full retrial on the evidence rather than a review of legal errors only. That is why the second hearing could leave the father's conviction in place while sharply cutting a co-defendant's sentence and clearing the mother. The prosecution also showed that a Greek court will convict of murder without a recovered body when forensic traces and other evidence are strong. We found no evidence that the case led to a specific change in Greek law.