Note from the LeftEast editors: This is an interview with Jock Palfreeman, an Australian citizen and prisoner in Blugaria, who is the founder of the Bulgarian Prisoners’ Association. In 2007 Jock was convicted for the murder of Bulgarian Andrei Monov although claimed that he was trying to help two Roma people that were attacked by a group of fifteen football hooligans. Many details about this night remained unclear to this day. The main witnesses–the two Roma–have disappeared. The surveillance camera footage that could show what happened this night has vanished without a trace. And even if Jock was attacked too and there was insufficient evidence that he actually killed Andrei Monov, all the Bulgarian courts have given to the Australian the same verdict – 20 years of prison for premeditated murder and attempted murder. The Bulgarian media have helped the mass hysteria by painting Jock as a man who came to Bulgaria to kill Bulgarians. So far, Jock has spent seven years in Bulgarian prison. Seeing the conditions there, in 2012, he organized prisoners – many of Roma or migrant origin – into the Bulgarian Prisoners` Rehabilitation Association (B.P.R.A.). As an association of prisoners and ex-prisoners, it is the first of its kind in Bulgarian history and thus marks a leap forward in Eastern Europe prisoners’ rights. Its main goal is to combat the corruption of the penitentiary institutions and to advance the struggle for prisoners´ rights in Bulgaria. The video was taken in November 2015 in the Sofia prison. For more news from the BPRA, visit their website.
