Police stopped and checked every car that left Sungurlare for Burgas yesterday to back mayor Dimitar Gavazov, MP and former interior minister Kalin Stoyanov says in a post.

A few days ago, Burgas District Court ordered Gavazov and Belitsa mayor Radoslav Revanski, both of the DPS party, held in custody. Yesterday the Court of Appeal overturned the detention of both men, who had been held for more than a week. Many people gathered outside the Palace of Justice to back the mayors. Stoyanov was among them, and he called the case an "absolute circus and farce".

See also: Kalin Stoyanov calls detention of Sungurlare and Belitsa mayors "a circus and a farce"

Stoyanov says officers from the Interior Ministry's regional directorate in Burgas checked cars at the entrance to the city before the court considered the pre-trial measures. He says 3-4 patrol cars and about 20 officers were there.

He says police wrote down the names of everyone travelling and checked their details against Interior Ministry wanted-persons systems, traffic police databases and other records. They also checked the cars themselves, including first-aid kits and fire extinguishers. Patrol cars chased some of the vehicles and pulled them over with sirens and flashing lights, he says.

The MP does not object to the checks themselves, which are part of the ministry's work. He objects to how they were done. He says they were biased and were a show of force by the ruling parties against members, supporters and mayors of an opposition party. Stoyanov described what happened as targeted harassment of friends, relatives and associates of Revanski and Gavazov who had come to support them.

Since this morning, police have also been checking the homes of people in DPS party structures after anonymous tip-offs about election offences and crimes. Stoyanov says the tip-offs are false and come from people close to Demerdzhiev's team, which is working on them.

"There is only one aim: to scare people and shake their resolve before the election on Sunday," Stoyanov wrote.

He believes the case against the two mayors is politically motivated and "crudely stitched together", and that its aim is to settle political scores with part of the opposition on behalf of a "dictatorial government". Stoyanov says the prosecutor from the Appellate Prosecutor's Office in Burgas looked visibly uneasy about the actions of the Interior Ministry investigators and the arguments of the detainees' lawyers.

He asked people to stay calm and not give in to fear. "Let us not forget that the snake is most dangerous when it is dying," Stoyanov wrote.