Jock Palfreeman freed from immigration detention in Bulgaria | World news


Australian Jock Palfreeman, who served 11 years in prison for fatally stabbing a Bulgarian man, has been released from immigration detention in the capital Sofia nearly a month after being granted parole.

But he is still not free to leave Bulgaria: authorities have confiscated his new Australian passport and he must report to police once a week until a ban on his leaving the country is formally lifted.

Palfreeman was released from Busmantsi Detention Centre in Sofia on Tuesday evening local time after a new court ruling unexpectedly ordered him freed from the centre.

Palfreeman’s liberty has been the subject of intense political and public debate in Bulgaria. Ultra-nationalist parties have protested for him to be re-imprisoned, while political figures have condemned the judiciary for granting him parole.

Speaking to journalists as he left the detention centre, Palfreeman said he wouldn’t try to flee.

“I am not afraid because I believe that the Bulgarian people will protect me like they have done over the past 12 years,” he said. “Bulgarians have always helped me, not Australians.”

He said Bulgarian authorities confiscated his passport shortly an hour before he was told he was being released.

“Forty police officers went through my cell. They took my Australian passport. That was very strange. Some high ranking officer told me I had no right to a passport since I’m banned from leaving the country.”

Palfreeman said he did not know where he would stay in Sofia, but was “happy” to be at liberty.

“Of course I am happy. I am out of prison today, for the second time. I hope everything will be over quickly.”

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

Palfreeman 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 central Sofia.

His lawyer, Kalin Angelov, recently released security camera footage of the incident, 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 Monov in the side of his chest – but was found guilty of murder. The conviction and sentence were upheld by higher courts. Palfreeman said he’d 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 divided the country’s legal fraternity.

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,” Hristo Monov said.

Ultra-nationalist political parties marched on Sofia’s Palace of Justice demanding Palfreeman be re-imprisoned, 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.


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