Face of Nation : Australian being held in a Sofia immigration detention facility has condemned Bulgarian authorities for keeping him locked up after he won a parole appeal last week, saying senior political figures are using his case to further their own political agenda.
Jock Palfreeman has also revealed Australian consular officials told him the Bulgarian immigration department director, Nikolay Nikolov, refused to grant them an audience to discuss his case on Wednesday.
“The director, the boss of the immigration department who is holding me, refused to speak with the embassy staff,” he said. “The Bulgarian authorities responsible for keeping me in prison … have blanked the Australian embassy staff. That was yesterday. I don’t know what the situation is today.”
Palfreeman is currently meeting with consular officials for the fourth day in a row inside the Busmantsi Detention Centre, where he has been held since last Friday. A day earlier, he won an appeal against a July decision to refuse him parole, after serving more than 11 years in Sofia’s maximum security prison.
The decision sparked a political storm in Sofia, where politicians are already in campaigning mode with municipal elections scheduled for October.
The leader of the far-right Ataka, or Attack Party, Volen Sidorov, called a rally of supporters earlier in the week to campaign for Palfreeman to be put back in jail. At the event, he announced he was running for mayor of Sofia.
Palfreeman revealed he has had travel documents for days. Lawyers have confirmed there is no legal precedent for keeping him in jail. “The embassy staff made me a new passport on Friday and brought it on Monday and an official copy was given to the immigration staff on Monday,” he said.
“The media [in Bulgaria] is being lied to [when they’re being told by politicians] that as soon as I get a passport I’m allowed to leave. That’s not true.” “Foreign Minister Marise Payne is scheduled to meet with her Bulgarian counterpart on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week,” her spokesman said.
