n its first ten
years the institute gave advanced instruction to 6,500 medical personnel
and an additional specialty to some 200 medical officers.

After the formation of the higher medical institute, the medical
services were given considerably broader authority over sanitation and
hygienic conditions throughout the military establishment. They
determine standards to be maintained and make inspections of living
quarters, food services, water supplies, bathing and laundry facilities,
and training and recreational areas; they give instruction in personal
and group hygiene. They also participate in the planning and design of
new barracks and any other buildings where troops work or train.

Appropriate to the enhanced status and authority of the medical service,
its section of the ministry was upgraded and has become one of the dozen
more important branches under the minister of national defense. Its
chief has been a doctor, the only major staff member who has been
neither a general officer of one of the armed services nor a
high-ranking party official.

Military Justice

Military courts, or tribunals, are special courts but are part of the
national judicial system and subject to the same codes as are the
civilian courts. In the same kind of relationship, military crimes are a
special category of crime but are listed within the overall Bulgarian
criminal code. The separation of military justice from the rest of the
judicial machinery is almost complete, however, although jurisdiction in
a criminal situation could be in question and, in its early treatment, a
case could be transferred from the jurisdiction of a military to a civil
court or vice versa. Once tried before a military tribunal, the
proceedings and sentence of a trial might be reviewed by a higher
military court or might go to the Supreme Court, but it would be
extremely rare for a case to be reviewed by a civil court. Within the
Supreme Court a review would be accomplished only by a military panel of
that court.

Military crimes are those committed on military installations or those
that relate to the performance of military duty, to military property or
personnel, to military honor, or to certain aspects of national
security. Servicemen of all ranks, military reserves during their
training or whenever they are under military control, personnel of the
police or any of the other militarized security units, or any other
persons involved in military crimes