Freed Australian Jock Palfreeman fears Bulgarian corruption could land him back in jail

Australian Jock Palfreeman, who has been freed from detention but banned from leaving Bulgaria, has said he fears systemic corruption within that country’s criminal justice system could see him returned to jail for years beyond his original sentence.

In an interview with the ABC shortly after being released from immigration detention, Palfreeman said he feared the influence of far-right political movements, which are seeking to have him reimprisoned, on the judiciary and criminal justice system.

Palfreeman served 11 years of a 20-year sentence for the 2007 murder of a student, before being paroled last month. Palfreeman has consistently maintained he acted in self-defence, a version of events supported by a recently released video showing him coming to the aid of two men being assaulted by a group of more than a dozen other men.

While he was paroled last month, and this week released from immigration detention, Palfreeman has had his passport seized and cannot leave Bulgaria. He fears a political push to have his case “reopened” could see him reimprisoned far beyond his original sentence.

The nationalist VMRO party, a junior government coalition party which has protested his parole, nominated deputy minister of justice Nikolay Prodanov to his position.

“The fear of going back to prison is connected with the fact this fascist party still controls the prisons,” Palfreeman told the ABC.

“For sure they would set me up, they would put drugs in my room, they would get a false witness against me, they would set me up to try to get me another sentence and to put me back into maximum security prison.”

Palfreeman said the rule of law in Bulgaria was being sacrificed for political expediency in his case, with politicians seeking to sate populist movements in the country.

“The laws are clear that they shouldn’t send my case back to be reopened, but the laws are also clear that when you’re being attacked by 13 men that you’re allowed to defend yourself, and I got 20 years anyway,” Palfreeman said.

While concerned about endemic corruption in the criminal justice system, Palfreeman praised the Bulgarian people for standing up to authoritarian forces in the country.

“What I would like people in Australia to understand [is] that there are many brave Bulgarians who have been trying to fight against the corruption, against the mafia, the powers that be, that are corrupting the justice system,” he said.

Palfreeman has said if he is freed, he would like to stay in Bulgaria to continue his work with the Bulgarian Prisoners’ Association he helped establish, campaigning for inmates’ rights in the country.

However, if he is granted his liberty it appears certain Palfreeman will be deported from the country.

Australia’s foreign affairs minister Marise Payne has consistently raised concerns that “non-legal considerations” were influencing Bulgaria’s highly irregular treatment of Palfreeman’s case since he was paroled.

Payne has made repeated entreaties to her Bulgarian counterpart Ekaterina Zakharieva, insisting the Bulgarian government afford Palfreeman “due process, consistent with Bulgarian law”.

Palfreeman, from Sydney, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years for fatally stabbing a 23-year-old law student, Andrei Monov, in Sofia during a night out in December 2007. He was also convicted of attempted murder of Monov’s associate Antoan Zahariev, who was injured.

The Australian has consistently maintained he acted in self-defence in the early hours of 28 December 2007, after intervening to prevent Monov and a group of more than a dozen friends from attacking two Roma men in the city centre.

His lawyer, Kalin Angelov, has released security camera footage of the brawl, which Palfreeman said exonerated him and demonstrated clearly his stabbing of Monov occurred after the group turned on him.

Then 21, Palfreeman pleaded not guilty to murdering Monov (he was carrying a large butterfly knife belonging to a friend with which he stabbed the student in the side of his chest) but was found guilty of murder. The conviction and sentence were upheld by higher courts. Palfreeman said he had been carrying the knife because he’d previously experienced violence in Sofia.

While his unexpected parole in September was greeted with elation by his family and supporters in Australia, it was condemned by senior politicians in Bulgaria, including the dead man’s father, and has divided the country’s legal fraternity.

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 said.

Ultra-nationalist political parties marched on Sofia’s Palace of Justice demanding Palfreeman be reimprisoned, and the country’s prosecutor general launched a highly irregular appeal to the supreme court of cassation, the highest court in the land, for his parole to be overturned.

A decision by that court – likely to ultimately decide Palfreeman’s freedom – is expected within two months.