Updated
Bulgaria's highest court has announced it will now hear the case of Australian Jock Palfreeman a fortnight earlier than originally scheduled.
Key points:
- Jock Palfreeman was granted parole on September 19
- He was released from prison the next day and placed in a detention centre for illegal migrants as he did not have a current passport
- He was provided with an emergency passport three days later, but remains in the detention centre
Last week Prosecutor-General Sotir Tsatsarov asked the Supreme Court of Cassation to suspend a court decision to release Palfreeman from prison on parole and to re-open the case.
Palfreeman has been in prison for almost 11 years after being found guilty of murdering Bulgarian law student Andrei Monov and attempting to murder Antoan Zahariev.
The trial judge sentenced the Australian to 20 years' jail with a non-parole period of 10 years.
That decision was upheld on appeal and during a second appeal to the country's highest court.
In July this year, Palfreeman's request for parole was denied.
But on September 19, a panel of three appeal judges overturned that decision and granted him parole. According to Bulgarian law, that decision was final.
The next day, Palfreeman was released from prison and placed in Busmanti Detention Centre for illegal migrants because he did not have a current passport.
Public and political protest against the parole judgement then followed.
Australian authorities provided Palfreeman with an emergency passport three days later.
Shortly after, Andrei Monov's parents asked the Prosecutor-General to intervene.
Mr Tsatsarov then wrote to the Supreme Court of Cassation, asking it to revoke Palfreeman's parole and to examine the appeal court process on the basis of what he alleged was a conflict of interest on the part of two members of the panel that heard it.
The Supreme Judicial Council then issued the following "position": "We are sympathetic to the pain and suffering of Andrei Monov's relatives, sharing their sense of a broken balance between law and justice."
In response, the Bulgarian Judges Union issued a rebuke signed by 292 judges: "It is in exactly cases such as this that the judge needs to have the unconditional and steadfast support by the institution appointed for that purpose — the SJC — as this the only way that we can uphold the rule of the law and the independence of the judiciary…
"Instead, the Bulgarian judge receives a clear and categorical sign that if they don't rule in accordance with the public opinion and wills of the political parties and their specific political leaders, they are going to be abused, vilified, physically persecuted and maltreated and the only reaction of the [Supreme Judicial Council] will be cooperation in their disciplinary persecution."
On October 1, the head of the Supreme Court of Cassation, Lozan Panov, criticised the Supreme Judicial Council's position on the case.
He is quoted in Bulgarian media as saying: "This whole approach, in which hatred and loathing is directed towards magistrates, whether or not we agree with rulings, is a return to an epoch which, I believe, should be forgotten."
The Supreme Court of Cassation was due to hear this case on October 23 but has now moved that to October 7.
The deputy head of the court issued this statement: "Due to to the extraordinary public interest in the trial and due to the information that Jock Palfreeman, who has been granted parole, cannot move freely because of the upcoming decision to be made by the Supreme Court of Cassation, I find that we should allow the opportunity to hear the case sooner."
The hearing on October 7 is to be headed up by Zhanina Nacheva, who was on the panel of judges that heard Palfreeman's final appeal of the 2009 verdict and sentence.
Topics: prisons-and-punishment, law-crime-and-justice, rights, murder-and-manslaughter, crime, bulgaria, australia
First posted