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Jock Palfreeman is likely to learn on Monday whether he will be free to leave Bulgaria after serving almost 11 years in prison for murder, a crime the Australian says was committed in self-defence.
Bulgaria’s highest court was scheduled to hear an appeal against his parole – granted last month – on 23 October but, amid a rising tide of populist protest over the decision to release him, it has brought forward the hearing to 7 October.
Having been released from prison in the capital, Sofia, the 32-year-old was taken to Busmanti detention centre because he didn’t have a valid passport or the right to remain in Bulgaria. He has since been given emergency travel documents but has not been allowed to leave the country.
Last week Bulgaria’s prosecutor general, Sotir Tsatsarov, asked the supreme court of cassation to suspend the court decision to release Palfreeman on parole and to reopen the case.
Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, said she was concerned that “non-legal matters” could be influencing the decision to keep him detained.
Payne spoke with her Bulgarian counterpart, Ekaterina Zakharieva, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly meeting last week, and wrote to her again this week “seeking the government’s assistance in Bulgaria in facilitating arrangements for [Palfreeman’s] immediate return to Australia”.
“I am certainly deeply disappointed that he remains detained in Bulgaria,” Payne told ABC radio on Wednesday. “I am concerned … that there may be a range of non-legal considerations … that are influencing this matter, and I want to be sure that the law is being applied consistently.
“I am strongly of the view that he should be treated in accordance with Bulgarian law and that he be allowed to return to Australia immediately.”
Paul “Jock” Palfreeman, from Sydney, has served almost 11 years of a 20-year sentence for fatally stabbing a 23-year-old law student, Andrei Monov, and injuring Antoan Zahariev, in Sofia in 2007. He has maintained that he acted in self-defence, saying he had been attacked after intervening to prevent Monov and a group of more than a dozen men from assaulting two Roma men in the early hours of 28 December 2007.
Palfreeman, then 21 and enlisted in the British army, pleaded not guilty to murdering Monov and attempting to murder Zahariev. The Australian was carrying a large butterfly knife belonging to a friend, and said he had the knife because he’d previously been assaulted in Sofia.
The prosecution alleged he had launched an unprovoked attack on the men. Palfreeman was convicted of murder and attempted murder, and sentenced to 20 years in prison with a non-parole period of 10 years. His conviction and sentence were upheld on appeal to higher courts.
In July Palfreeman’s request for parole was denied. But on 19 September a panel of three appeal judges overturned that decision. According to Bulgarian law, that decision was final. He was moved the next day into immigration detention.
But while Palfreeman’s parole was greeted with elation by his family in Australia it has been condemned by senior politicians in Bulgaria, including the dead man’s father.
Andrei Monov’s father, Hristo, a former MP for the Bulgarian Socialist party, said the court had made a mockery of Bulgaria’s people.
“The three judges … will carry a moral disgrace on their own,” he told Darik Radio.
The far-right ultra-nationalist Ataka party – Attack in English – has held protests in Sofia, marching on the Palace of Justice.
The nationalist VMRO party, one of two parties sharing power, has demanded that the presiding panel judge be sacked, and has written to the prosecutor general insisting that the human rights group the Bulgaria Helsinki Committee, which had advocated for Palfreeman, be banned.
The case has also divided Bulgaria’s legal system. Tsatsarov, the prosecutor general, alleged that two of the three members of the panel held a conflict of interest, having previously been involved in the case.
The supreme judicial council, the 25-member peak administrative body of the Bulgarian judiciary, then issued an extraordinary statement, saying: “We are sympathetic to the pain and suffering of Andrei Monov’s relatives, sharing their sense of a broken balance between law and justice.”
The head of the supreme court of cassation, Lozan Panov, criticised the council’s position. And the Bulgarian Judges Union responded issued a rebuke signed by 292 judges defending the judiciary’s impartiality and independence.
“The Bulgarian judge receives a clear and categorical sign that if they don’t rule in accordance with public opinion and wills of the political parties and their specific political leaders, they are going to be abused, vilified, physically persecuted and maltreated,” it said.
As Palfreeman’s case has dominated news in Bulgaria, his lawyer Kalin Angelov took to social media to defend his client, saying populist opinion that the Australian was a reckless and deliberate killer was not supported by the facts of the case.
He posted images from CCTV footage showing Palfreeman coming to the rescue of two men being attacked by a group of 13 men, including Monov and Zahariev.
“It is without a doubt that Jock Palfreeman acted in the conditions of inevitable defence and that we have held an innocent man in prison.”
“Inevitable defence” is a concept in Bulgarian law involving action to protect another person under attack.
with agencies
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