A Scottish court found 22-year-old Bulgarian migrant Ilia Belov guilty of assaulting a 12-year-old girl and behaving in a threatening or abusive manner toward four girls aged 12 to 14 in Dundee, the same incident that Scottish officials and police spent days waving off as a product of online "misinformation."
Belov's 20-year-old sister, Nadjedzha Belova, had already pleaded guilty to assaulting a 13-year-old girl during the same August 23, 2025, confrontation on St Ann Lane in Dundee. Both face sentencing on August 5th.
The guilty verdict lands after a chain of official responses that looks, in hindsight, far more concerned with managing public perception than protecting the children who were attacked. Within days of the incident, Police Scotland issued statements emphasizing "misinformation" on social media. Scotland's First Minister John Swinney blamed Elon Musk by name. Former First Minister Humza Yousaf mocked those who raised alarms. And a local newspaper reported that police had found "nothing to support the allegations" against the Bulgarian pair, even as footage of the confrontation circulated online.
Now a sheriff has ruled otherwise.
Sheriff Timothy Niven-Smith rejected Belov's defense, calling it "wholly unconvincing and self-serving." Belov had claimed he was simply walking to a shop to buy cigarettes when a group of children began shouting abuse at him with "zero provocation." He said he called his sister to the scene because he was scared of the group of young girls.
The sheriff was not persuaded. The court heard that Belov shouted at the children first and was said to have called out to them, "hello sexy, I'll show you a good time." Sheriff Niven-Smith stated plainly:
"I am entirely satisfied by proof beyond reasonable doubt that the trigger for all of this were the comments that you made."
Belov pushed a 12-year-old girl to the ground. The BBC reported that Nadjedzha Belova assaulted a 13-year-old by pulling her by the hair, dragging her to the ground, and hitting her in the head. One girl was hospitalized.
During the incident, widely shared footage showed a 13-year-old girl pulling a hand-axe and a knife from the waistband of her trousers, the image that gave the case its grim public shorthand. One child was heard shouting at the male to leave them alone. A 12-year-old girl was later cautioned and charged with possession of offensive weapons.
Belov told the court: "I am human. I deserve to ask them why I deserve so much disrespect. I didn't do anything to them." When challenged on his account, he responded: "No, I swear on my god."
The sheriff found none of it credible.
What makes this case sting is not just the assault itself. It is the timeline of official deflection that preceded the conviction.
Four days after the August 23rd incident, Police Scotland issued a public statement on August 27th. It read in part:
"We are aware of misinformation being shared on social media in relation to an incident where a Bulgarian couple were approached by youths in St Ann Lane, Dundee, on Saturday, 23 August 2025. A 12-year-old girl has been charged with being in possession of offensive weapons."
Note the framing. The Bulgarian couple was "approached by youths." The child was charged. No mention of charges against Belov or Belova, because at that point, they apparently had not yet been arrested. The Courier reported on August 27th that officers had reviewed CCTV and "found nothing to support the allegations made against the two individuals."
The very next day, August 28th, First Minister John Swinney escalated. He did not address the assault on the girls. He addressed the public's reaction to it. Swinney told reporters:
"But what is very important is that Police Scotland have issued a warning about deliberate misinformation that is being used to stoke up fear and alarm in our communities."
Then he went further, naming Elon Musk specifically:
"I am concerned about that and everybody should be concerned about that because we live in a fundamentally safer country today than we did 40 years ago... But people like Elon Musk, with the misinformation that has been stoked up about this case, are trying to undermine that sense of cohesion within our communities and it is totally and utterly unacceptable, and Police Scotland are absolutely right to call it out."
Former First Minister Humza Yousaf piled on, dismissing those who discussed the case online. He invoked Tommy Robinson by his legal name and declared that anyone who said migrants had tried to sexually assault the girls was peddling lies from "his racist far-right mob." Yousaf asked rhetorically, "Who would have guessed the far-right were full of bulls***?"
The Scottish establishment's preferred narrative was clear: an innocent Bulgarian couple was harassed by armed youths, and social media agitators, particularly foreign ones, were whipping up hatred over nothing. That was the story on August 27th and 28th.
Then the investigation continued. CCTV was reviewed more carefully. And both Belov and Belova were charged.
Tayside Chief Superintendent Elaine Logue acknowledged as much after Belov's conviction, telling STV:
"A 12-year-old girl was cautioned and charged... following further investigation, including review of CCTV, Ilia Belov and Nadjedzha Belova were charged... This was a distressing incident and led to understandable community concern and significant speculation across social media, including misinformation that Belov and Belova are asylum seekers."
Logue also conceded something that deserves more attention than it received:
"The incident is an example of the complex situations which officers are required to deal with, and I recognise that initial information did not fully reflect the situation."
"Initial information did not fully reflect the situation." That is a polite way of saying the police got it wrong in public, at speed, while lecturing the public about getting it wrong on social media.
The mother of one of the young girls welcomed the prosecution. She called it "a good thing" and said her daughter and the other children had been vindicated:
"telling the truth and they were slandered. There were too many lies at the start, so I'm glad it's all come out."
That quote should sit heavily on anyone who spent the days after August 23rd accusing the public of spreading lies. The children were telling the truth. The adults in charge, the police, the politicians, the former First Minister, were the ones who got it wrong. And they did not get it wrong quietly. They got it wrong loudly, publicly, and with moral condemnation aimed at anyone who believed the girls.
One girl was hospitalized. A 13-year-old was dragged to the ground by her hair and struck in the head. A 12-year-old was pushed down by an adult man. These are children aged 12 to 14. The court found that the adult male initiated the confrontation with sexually suggestive comments directed at them.
The Dundee case fits a pattern that has repeated across the United Kingdom in recent years. An incident involving a migrant or foreign national and local residents generates public alarm. Footage circulates. Officials respond, not by addressing the incident itself, but by warning the public against "misinformation" and "far-right" agitation. The investigation catches up later. And when the facts come out, they are closer to what the public suspected than to what the authorities initially claimed.
The Courier even published an interview with Belov during the window when his victim had been charged but he had not yet been arrested. The public was being told one version of events. The courts eventually told another.
None of this means every social media post about the case was accurate. Logue noted that some users falsely described Belov and Belova as asylum seekers; they are Bulgarian nationals. Getting that detail wrong matters. But the core concern, that a migrant adult male had confronted and assaulted young girls, turned out to be true, proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Swinney called the public's concern "totally and utterly unacceptable." A sheriff called Belov's defense "wholly unconvincing and self-serving." Only one of those judgments was delivered under oath, backed by evidence, and subject to the rules of a courtroom.
Belov and Belova will be sentenced on August 5th. The 12-year-old girl who carried a hand-axe was cautioned and charged separately. Those are the legal consequences, and they should proceed.
But there is a different kind of accountability that Scottish officials have so far avoided. No one has explained why the initial police statement framed the Bulgarian pair as victims "approached by youths" while omitting any indication that the adults were suspects. No one has explained why the First Minister's first instinct was to attack Elon Musk rather than address the assault on schoolchildren. No one has explained why a former First Minister used the case to mock public concern before the investigation was complete.
The mother of one of the girls said it plainly: "There were too many lies at the start."
She was not talking about social media. She was talking about the people in charge.
