site.btaECHR Rejects Jock Palfreeman's Appeal against Prison Punishments

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has declared inadmissible Jock Palfreeman's appeal against Bulgaria, the Ministry of Justice said on Wednesday. The decision is final. The case concerns disciplinary sanctions imposed on the foreigner in 2018 in prison, where he was serving a sentence for murder before being paroled.

The sanctions were for three offenses, including sticking stickers with an indecent image and offensive content - a modified emblem of the Bulgarian Prisoners' Rehabilitation Association, headed by Palfreeman.

In his appeal to the ECHR, Jock Palfreeman claimed violations of Art. 10 (freedom of expression), Art. 11 (freedom of assembly and association), Art. 13 (right to an effective remedy) and Art. 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights. He also claimed that he was treated differently because of his status as a person involved in the protection of prisoners' rights, and that the real purpose of the three disciplinary sanctions was to silence him and discourage the activities of his organization.

The ECHR was adamant that the complaints were unfounded.

The ECHR accepted that the disputed disciplinary sanction constituted an interference with freedom of expression. The main issue in the case is whether the interference was proportionate. The Court accepted the arguments of the Bulgarian side that the Administrative Court, which ruled on the case, had set out sufficient and adequate reasons - it had established that it was Palfreeman who had affixed the stickers and that the image on them was offensive. The domestic courts also considered that the stickers did not express any value judgment or opinion and that the applicant had breached the prison rules. The ECHR found the penalty imposed, additional cleaning duties for seven days, to be appropriate and proportionate.

The claim that the penalty had prevented Palfreeman from applying for parole was found speculative and unsupported by any concrete evidence.

As regards to the complaint of lack of an effective remedy, the applicant had access to two levels of judicial review (including the Supreme Administrative Court), in which the courts examined the merits of his appeal against the disciplinary penalty.

The ECHR also found unproven Palfreeman’s claims that he had in fact been punished for his activities as a human rights defender, for having expressed a critical opinion before the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on prison conditions and other criticisms of the authorities.

The European Court did not find the foreigner's alleged ulterior motive for the punishments imposed on him in an interview with the then-deputy minister of justice. No evidence of unlawful interference or other action was presented, the ECHR ruled.

The full text of the decision can be found here.