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Notes -
We apparently have one more update on the Braveheart Incident. Previous discussions:
The latest update is a short article from the BBC:
This is throwing me for a loop. The good news is that unlike the local news articles I cited previously, the BBC actually names the accused, the bad news is originally the adult involved in the incident was identified as "Fatos Ali Dumana", and now I have no idea whether we're talking about the same guy, and it was just a nickname, or it was a completely different person. A quick google search only turned up some indie (somewhat tinfoily) blog post, where it is indeed claimed that "Fatos Ali Dumana" is just an alias, and that the perps real name is Ilia Belov. What speaks in it's favor is that the post is dated September 12, 2025, so way before this current BBC article (and here's an archive.org snapshot to corroborate), so it's not someone trying to use the latest info to portray the original story as true. Other than that I only found some dude on Reddit urging people to look up a Facebook reel:
I don't have Facebook, so I can't confirm.
Either way, the accusations put forward by the prosecutors seem largely consistent with "Braveheart" story - girls got sexually harassed, assaulted, and one of them went for makeshift weapons in order to defend her sister / friends.
I am sure that everyone who wagged their fingers saying how "nothing will convince us otherwise", how "they knew something was off", how it's a "noble effort, but hopeless" because us chuds are too biased and stubborn, will now wag their fingers at themselves with the same amount of enthusiasm.
The ID (which identifies his Bulgarian citizenship) says BELOV Mr. Ilia Kostadinov. This straightforwardly means he's Ilia Belov and his father's given name was Kostadin. There seems to be a lot of these guys. Like, here is the youtube of a Bulgarian guy named like this, but it's ancient.
How he can also be Fatos Ali Dumana, is beyond my Slavic knowledge, I guess that's just his nickname on FB. «Fatos is an Albanian masculine given name, which means "daring", "brave" or "valiant"». (Bulgaria and Albania are separated by North Macedonia). The caption on the video means something like "hey ladies, congratulations". He's listening to this crap from a duo of rappers, Turkish and German (I guess also Turkish). The ladies, surprisingly enough, do congratulate him, they seem to be family (at least one is clearly some auntie). The account is low-activity and consists of typical slop you might expect of a young low-IQ Southern Slav with Global Black characteristics trying to show off clothes and shit, or perhaps really just a Gypsy, though neither of his names is Gypsy-coded.
Looking up "Ali Dumana" flows the search with this Ilia. It's a very unusual string of tokens. If I restrict the search to a period before this scandal, I only get nonsense like this (an independent sexual allegation in Dundee, no Dumanas), somehow.
Now theCourier publishes propaganda about our "Dumana":
"Fetka" is Slavic, "Fatosh" is some dimunitive in Arabic/Turkic I guess?
I particularly like this detail:
So we get the name of the irrelevant right-winger, but the Mr Dumana remains an enigma. Brits are quite provincial, this is not exactly Soviet but pretty crude. Did they do any actual investigation?
Anyway, he's a Bulgarian citizen named Ilia Belov, he's got this weird Islamic pseudonym, he looks quite brown (without throwing any shade – that entire region is brown, I can't pin him to a specific country, between Bulgaria/Albania/etc), so I guess the girls could have panicked/reacted racistly even if he is a peaceful "Bulgarian dad" (feels weird to identify someone aged 22 as primarily "dad") and has never hurt a fly.
Very low information situation.
A relative of mine lives in the UK, and when he was last over he said that he always appreciates when media outlets point out that "Tommy Robinson" isn't his legal name. I replied "so you think it's okay to deadname him?"
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If they are gypsies - this all makes sense. And yes ... by the time they are 22 for the poorer and unintegrated part of them - which is the one that tends to flock to the west - it is normal to be on their Xth kid - although thankfully in the last years their birth rates collapse, and they participate more in the society.
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My sense is that Bulgarian Gypsies comprise a very strange genetic and cultural soup, and having multiple fake names with some of them being Turkic is not at all out of the ordinary. Consult Wikipedia for the language, and maybe one of the two sources of Skibidi Toilet for vibes.
Wikipedia does not mention Albanian, but in reality they have a quite significant presence there too (some estimates say up to 5%?), so it would not be surprising to see some vocabulary backwash. In a way, there is some curious convergence between their ways and those of another famous class of rootless cosmopolitans, though of course they wind up on different ends of the social hierarchy.
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I'm happy to concede if the prosecution ends in a conviction. I still think it's more likely than not that they're acquitted (if I had to put a number on it, 70%).
I'm also happy to acknowledge that acquittal doesn't necessarily mean a lack of guilt, but I don't think the British judicial system is so corrupt that it represents null evidence.
So you will go 2:1 on this?
I have 100 British Pounds to your 200 that, contingent on a trial occurring, a guilty verdict is returned. (ie. bet is off if there's a plea bargain; you can have "not proven" or whatever jury shenanigans might be possible in Scotland though)
I'm not sure I trust you enough to hold up your end of the bargain. If, for the sake of example, it was @ArjinFerman offering, I'd take it, though I'd prefer smaller sums like £50:25 since I don't care that much. If you're willing to go through the hassle of finding someone to use as an escrow, while using crypto (which is hassle on my part), sure.
If not, I care about my reputation and epistemics to happily accept being proven wrong, if and when I'm proven wrong.
I'm pretty high trust myself, and can certainly find a way to get you 25 sterling without resorting to crypto -- but if you need someone to hold the dough that's fine with me. Pick somebody and we can both send them some cash -- I don't expect the mills of Scottish justice to grind excessively fast on this one.
I can nominate @ArjinFerman or @Corvos, if they're willing to accept. I'd be happy to not bother with an escrow if you're fine with it, given the lower sums involved.
My proposed terms are clear concessions on an acquittal or conviction, and if this somehow doesn't resolve in 2 years, a general throwing up of hands and acceptance that we're never getting to the bottom of this.
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Personally, I'd say that if the police and prosecutors pressed charges against Dumana / Belov in the current political climate, the evidence against him must be pretty strong, and that would warrant a 70% bet in the other direction (keep in mind your original argument rested on nothing more than statements from the police, not official charges, or an actual convction).
But that's beside the point. I don't really have a problem with you falling on the other side of this and sticking to your guns, my issue was with your top level post on the topic, and how you portrayed anyone unconvinced by your arguments as unreasonable.
Hmm? I don't think that's the case. I also heavily stressed what can only be described as "local sentiment", perhaps priors, in addition to the official story. The locals (debatably including me) thought it's more likely than not.
For example:
That is not true. I think I made a strong argument, but I also acknowledge:
In other words, as a Bayesian, my opinion is that you should at the very least be slightly swayed by the argument. That is not the same as thinking that anyone who disagrees with me is unreasonable. There are actual people (living breathing humans) who are immune to any argument, probably including divine intervention. My scorn is largely reserved for them.
Similarly, the article you shared has meaningfully moved my posteriors. Back then, I expect that if anyone asked, I'd say I'm 80-90% confident of a lack of guilt, and now I've moved down to 70%. That is precisely the kind of update in the face of new evidence that I endorse and respect. Hence why I do it myself.
I expect that if a conviction is secured, I'd jump to maybe a 90% certainty that I was wrong, and if they're acquitted, then back up to 90% confidence of being correct. Feel free to tag me if something happens, since I don't really read the BBC that often.
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I think one thing you didn't address in your original post, that heavily informed my opinion on this story is that:
Young men are animals. Cross border, cross race, cross culture, etc. As they say, testosterone is a hell of a drug. Ages 15-25 I don't trust the sexual judgement of 90% of young men. Most of those men find a productive or semi-productive outlet for their sexual desire. I think porn has helped blunt the edge of young horny men in modern society, but the blade is still there lying at the throat of society and young women. Some number of men slip through the productive cracks, and they target younger women. Even a 22 year olds loser with no job smoking weed all day can look cool to a 16 year old dumb girl.
Much of the time its the responsibility of fathers and older brothers to protect young women from these predations. The threat of getting your ass kicked is usually enough to deter the worst dirtbags. But in the absence of these protections there are occasionally going to be cases where the young women themselves take defense into their own hands.
The base story here of young 20's man hits on young teenage girls is absolutely not surprising to me. I'd guess there are stories like this in every location in the world with more than a few thousand people. A case where there are no men around to protect the young girls is not that strange, especially in a low class area where fathers might be absentee. A case where the girls take their defense into their own hands seems inevitable, humans have a basic need for security and protection. All of that would have been a total non-story.
Its just that the young 20's man is an immigrant, and the young teenage girls are native. Which sparks the culture war aspect of this all. But those additional considerations seem inevitable in any situation where there are immigrants. Similar situations sparked off black race riots in the south (young black men hitting on young teenage white girls).
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If you are using judicial verdicts to update your world view as if they were unbiased (in the statistical sense) estimators of guilt, you are doing it wrong.
Suppose a parent shows up at a hospital with a non-verbal, injured child, displaying injuries of a type which is generally thought to be caused by violence in 85-95% of the cases and accidents in 5-15% of the cases, as estimated by different domain experts. Suppose that there is no further evidence to be found either way -- the parent denies using violence, and there is no video of how the kid got injured.
The way I have constructed the example, there is only one possible outcome in a fair criminal trial: acquittal due to reasonable doubt, as the courts would rather let ten guilty go free than sentence one innocent.
A guilty verdict is very strong evidence of guilt. A verdict of 'not proven' is very weak evidence of factual innocence (as opposed to legal innocence).
I imagine this can lead to cases where two people who had a gunfight can both get away with claiming self defense. If we try A and find we have to acquit him because it is plausible that they acted in self defense, we obviously can not base a trial on B around the finding that A was innocent as far as the law could tell.
For the Braveheart thing, I do not really have a horse in the race. On priors, I would find it more likely that young men harass some underage girls than that some underage girls get out of their way to threaten some young immigrant men, but stranger things than the latter have happened.
I don't see how this disagrees with anything I've said?
The hypothetical example you've presented is probably more cut-and-dry than anything we've seen here. I suspect that it would actually be more likely to end in a conviction than you think, judges do not regularly do Bayesian calcs in court.
I agree, in fact I alluded to the same. If a video came out showing an assault by the accused and without a conviction (as unlikely as that is), then I'd be willing to accept that in lieu of a favorable legal verdict.
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The bayes calc on it would just be a total win for the "he touched the girls" take.
Reminds me of the Australian SAS warcrime case. Footage was released of what was inarguably an extra judicial killing of a captured and unarmed man. Like, I'm ex Australian army and not even I could deny that these guys were guilty of murder. But there were still hundreds of people saying "they haven't been convicted yet" and "the investigation hasn't been concluded."
https://old.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/1lccwjc/australian_sasr_during_their_deployment_to/
But we could see it with our own eyes. You can see in real time the murder happening, zero grounds for self defence. In war you get away with shooting the odd POW, sure. That guy could have been making IEDs or have personally killed Australians, sure. But if you get caught on camera you go to jail. That's how the world works. Why do people insist on the outcome of the investigation or the court ruling when they can see with their own eyes the crime occurring.
It's a weird deferral of responsibility, even though we know the courts are wrong all the time.
It immediately brings to mind consummate bureaucrat Buck Turgidson:
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I tend to agree with this. Also, from what I understand about the UK system for criminal prosecution, it seems unlikely that these charges would have been filed against these defendants in the absence of strong evidence of guilt.
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It seems like your explanation covers only half the story. And the alternative explanation covers the other half. In the original video the girls are screaming "don't fuckin' touch us over and over." They're still obviously carrying weapons. Why isn't the middle of the road opinion that some Scottish "neds" were walking around with knives (your take) and were felt up by the guy at some point (braveheart take) explaining why they were yelling and brandishing weapons while backing away?
I agree that's a possibility, and if that's proven, I'd be more sympathetic. I personally disagree quite a bit with the UK's approach towards banning pretty much every form of self-defense.
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Surely it seems rather unlikely that even the kind of man who feels up young girls in the street would feel up young girls already carrying knives. There's poor impulse control, and there's Darwin Award-bait.
I presume the kind of scottish teenagers who carry hatchets to the park are the kind who know not to brandish them as they walk down the street.
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Do we know why he has that alias? I feel like the Occam's Razor solution, in the absence of an official explanation, is that he's from the Soviet Muslim tradition of having an Islamic name and an assimilated one for records. Could also be a convert, though, or some form of con artist.
His social media handle was something along the lines of "gypsy gangster". I'd assume there's something in Bulgarian yob culture (I suppose I could ask Bulgarian friends, but that feels rather embarrassing) where Muslims/Gypsies are seen as harder.
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I don't know if "Smoke Check" has the same meaning or connotations in Turkey, Bulgaria, Chechnya, or wherever these guys hail from, but "Ali Smoke Check" just sounds like an alias that an edgy 22 year-old would come up with to me.
What is a "smoke check" and what does it have to do with "Fatos Ali Dumana"?
Don't know the relevance, but "smoke check" is US military slang for shooting someone. Dust flies off clothing/skin when a bullet impacts, can leave a little cloud behind briefly.
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