site.btaSupreme Court Refuses to Reopen Case of Palfreeman's Early Release

, May 28 (BTA) - Bulgaria's Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) has decided to take no action on a motion by former prosecutor general Sotir Tsatsarov to order the Sofia Appellate Court (SAC) to reopen a case in which Australian national Jock Palfreeman was granted a conditional early release, the SCC said in a press release on Thursday.

The SCC took seven months to rule on Tsatsarov's motion. Its ruling is unappealable.

On September 19, 2019, a three-judge panel of the SAC granted a conditional early release to the 32-year-old man nearly seven years before the end of a 20-year prison sentence he received in 2009 for fatally stabbing a Bulgarian student and the attempted murder of another young man in Sofia in December 2007. The prosecution service asked the SCC to review the early release decision arguing that two of the judges on the three-member court panel were in conflict of interest.

On September 20, Palfreeman was transferred from Sofia Central Prison to the Interior Ministry Special Centre for Temporary Accommodation of Foreigners in Busmantsi (near Sofia) because his identity documents had expired and he was treated as an undocumented alien. The Australian was released from the Busmantsi Centre on October 15, 2019 but remains barred from leaving the country. RI/LG

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