No way out On the inside ... Jock Palfreeman in his cell at Sofia Central Prison. Photo: Boryana Dzhambazova Cell 17 is one of the biggest on the second floor of the foreigners' section of the notoriously rundown and overcrowded Sofia Central Prison. It is home for 26-year-old Australian Jock Palfreeman. Hanging from the ceiling are the Iraqi and the Iranian flags, and the Eureka flag. Previous inmates covered half of one wall in photos of naked women and rough attempts have been made to get rid of them and hide the ripped and degrading remains by hanging a sheet across the wall. On other walls, Palfreeman has put up posters of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Vasil Levski, who was executed in 1873 for his part in the struggle to free Bulgaria from 500 years of Ottoman rule. Palfreeman shares the four by six metre cell with eight others, most of them found guilty of border-crossing infringements and only here for a short time. Numbers fluctuate. "We keep the flags at opposite ends to keep the peace," says Palfreeman, roaring with laughter. His cell mates come from the Middle East and Sri Lanka and Palfreeman says they are refugees. In December 2009, Palfreeman was found guilty of murder with hooligan intent and attempted murder for a crime he maintains he didn't commit. He was sentenced to 20 years in a Bulgarian prison. He was also ordered to pay 450,000 lev (about $375,000 at the time) in victim compensation, a large amount by local standards. Since then he has lost all avenues of appeal available to him in the Balkan nation. Going down ... Bulgarian police escort Palfreeman to his trial in Sofia in late 2009. At 182 centimetres, Palfreeman towers above me. The prison cannot afford uniforms, so he is dressed in jeans and the army-style boots that were his trademark during his teenage years on Sydney's north shore. Although thin and pasty, Palfreeman radiates energy. The cell has a bathroom with a cracked toilet, a tap and a bucket in which the prisoners wash their clothes. Electrical fittings dangle from the wall. Broken heating pipes are taped together. There is also a makeshift kitchen, comprised of a bench, an electric kettle and a couple of rusted metal cupboards, one of which holds some instant coffee. Small cockroaches scuttle across the concrete floor. A prisoner with a distended belly button wheels a rickety trolley along the corridor outside the cell. He is delivering meals to the foreigners who are not allowed in the mess hall. Lunch is a piece of cold boiled liver, some tomato paste and a piece of bread. Two cats, Lion and Tiger, are curled up under Palfreeman's bed waiting for scraps; Palfreeman fostered them as kittens. Their mother was one of the nameless strays that dart around the barbed wire and rusted iron littering the prison grounds. Prisoners are allowed to spend only 90 minutes a day in the exercise yard. The pressure-cooker environment means this can be a dangerous place. With little else to do, Palfreeman spends most of his life sitting on his bed. His seniority means he has the coveted corner spot, but I notice that plaster falls from the ceiling above it. During the five years he has been incarcerated, he has managed to collect some furniture, mostly cast-offs from other prisoners. His area looks almost homely, with a desk, a lamp, a small TV and a prison-made fish tank in which he breeds guppies. Fateful night ... traffic surveillance footage of Andrei Monov's group chasing two Gypsies in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, in late 2007. An avid reader, Palfreeman has bolted a bookshelf to the wall so no one steals it. He has stuck a small photograph of his parents on the side of the TV, taken when Simon and Mary Jane were still together: their young faces smile reassuringly. On the wall next to his bed, there are photos of Jock and his two brothers, as well as a silver crucifix hanging on a chain and a copy of the funeral service for his high-school friend Louis Simpson, who was diagnosed with cancer during Palfreeman's trial and died before it ended. Near his pillow, Palfreeman has written the words of Swedish-American labour activist Joe Hill's stirring Workers of the World, Awaken: "If the workers get a notion, they can stop all speeding trains." Around 1am on December 28, 2007, a traffic surveillance camera captured a series of events in the heart of the Bulgarian capital. The recording shows two young men start an altercation with, then chase, two men who witnesses said were Gypsies. It is likely one of those youths is 20-year-old law student Andrei Monov. Suddenly, the young men are joined by 10 others. Then everyone quickly disappears out of frame. Witnesses said the youths proceeded to bash one of the fleeing men. About 30 seconds pass and a lone figure runs across the square in the same direction. That figure is most certainly Jock Palfreeman. Fast-forward the traffic recording. There are flashing lights, and a crush of people follow as police lead Palfreeman to a police van. Young men surround the vehicle: Palfreeman says they were pounding on it. The driver struggles to drive away. Minutes later an ambulance arrives. A tall young man lies on a stretcher, his right leg and arm dangling over it as the paramedics lift it into the ambulance. It is Andrei Monov. He is bleeding from a single stab wound to the side of his chest. By the time the ambulance gets to the hospital, Monov is dead. His blood-alcohol reading is estimated to be almost six times the legal limit for Australian motorists. Another young man sits on the curb with a flesh wound to his side. No winners here ... Hristo Monov. Photo: Dobrin Kashavelov Monov was the only child of well-connected parents. His mother is a notary, while his father, a psychologist who works for the government, is the go-to person for journalists seeking commentary on youth violence. Among the politicians at his funeral was Chavdar Georgiev, a former legal advisor to the Bulgarian president, and Mihael Mikov, who would soon be the country's interior minister. Also present was the head of Bulgaria's highest court of appeal. From the start, Jock Palfreeman said he had run to the assistance of a Gypsy who was being attacked by a group of football fans. He also said he only pulled out the knife when the aggressive youths turned on him, hoping that the sight of it would scare them away. He cannot remember stabbing anyone. According to his dad, pathologist Simon Palfreeman, Jock has always been impetuous and would rush to help others with little thought about the possible consequences. But to Andrei's father, Hristo Monov, Jock is a sociopath who will kill again if released. In defence ... Palfreeman's father, Simon (at left) with lawyer Dinko Kanchev. Jock Palfreeman is the eldest of three boys. Spencer is studying finance and accountancy, while Angus has just started university. Their mother, Mary Jane, is a dentist who for some time was also a councillor on Sydney's Mosman Council, where she was an outspoken advocate for her constituents' rights. Father Simon is very different; quiet and obedient, he was voted by his primary school class as the student most likely to be Pope because he earned so many points for good behaviour. For him, a fun night while at medical school was to listen to Mahler at home. Simon accepts that he was, and probably still is, a nerd. Palfreeman's parents separated in his last years of primary school, and when he was in year 9 he moved in with Simon and his new wife, Helen. Although bright, he never starred academically. Sitting still in class didn't suit him; he was happier outside rowing and playing rugby. But a passionate involvement in social-justice causes made him stand out at Sydney's St Ignatius' College, Riverview. He helped establish the Riverview Student Peace and Unity Congress and joined protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In a character reference for the Bulgarian court, Palfreeman's former house master described him as "a young man with a friendly, open personality and a positive outlook on life ... socially aware and prepared to speak out for what he felt was right. He willingly and unselfishly would go out of his way to help others and to involve and include those who may feel isolated or marginalised. Behind the wire ... Palfreeman says he's been jailed for a crime he didn't commit. Palfreeman headed off to Europe at 19, unsure of what he wanted to do in life. After arriving in Bulgaria in May 2006, he met Grayham Saunders, an English carpenter 10 years older than him, who was renovating a dilapidated house near the town of Samokov, 55 kilometres outside the capital. Palfreeman ended up staying in Samokov for five months, making close friends with locals his age and their families, buying a motorbike and travelling across the country in between working on the potato harvest and Saunders' house. He fell in love with a young Bulgarian woman - and the country. Yet he saw many incidents of violence in Bulgaria, including an attack on a Gypsy named Simo, who credits the Australian's intervention with saving his life. Palfreeman himself was assaulted several times. So he started carrying pepper spray when he went anywhere he thought was dodgy. In early August 2007, there was an outbreak of attacks and counter-attacks in Sofia between young Gypsies and Bulgarian skinheads. Then, one oppressively hot night late that month, a 17-year-old Gypsy, Asparuh Asenov, was killed in Samokov during a fight between four young Bulgarians and some Roma youths. An estimated 1000 Roma took to the streets of Samokov in protest. In an opinion piece for a Bulgarian newspaper titled "Gypsies versus Bulgarians: Two worlds on a knife edge," Andrei Monov's father, Hristo, argued that tragedies like this were inevitable because young ethnic Bulgarian men working hard to get ahead were understandably sick of seeing Gypsies on welfare, driving their "stinking horse-drawn carts on the streets of a European capital," where the ethnic Bulgarians hoped one day to drive "nice cars." At this stage, Palfreeman had left Bulgaria and was living in a squat near Grayham Saunders in the English city of Bristol, where he volunteered in a food co-operative and tried to keep the squat clean of drug dealers. He knew his visa would soon run out, and so, too, would his money if he did not secure paid employment. So in late November 2007, he enlisted in the British Army, which welcomes recruits from Commonwealth countries, and began basic infantry training. Wrong spot at the wrong time ... Andrei Monov. Palfreeman had once tried to join the Australian Defence Force. Life at sea sounded to him like a Boy's Own adventure: lots of demanding physical exercise with a group of mates. But after a mix-up with the application process, Palfreeman decided to explore Europe instead. One of the Samokov residents he had befriended, Tihomir Pashev, was a retired captain in the Bulgarian army, and he describes Palfreeman's "scatter-gun" approach to career planning: "He talked about one day becoming either a union leader or a soldier. He seemed to want to do everything at once. British military records of his aptitude test show Palfreeman could have done almost anything in the army. They also show that by the time the Christmas break came around, he had studied the theory of war, ethics, weapons safety and personal hygiene, and learnt to march. Palfreeman had learnt how to clean a rifle, but had not yet used one. He had learnt nothing about knives other than that they were banned in the barracks. Instead of spending the festive season with his aunt in Bath, at the last moment Palfreeman decided to return to Bulgaria with Saunders for the Christmas break. When he got to Samokov, he noticed the shops had either sold out or no longer stocked pepper spray, but this did not concern him as he intended to stay in the countryside, where he felt safe. Reunited with Bulgarian friends, he spent Christmas in the snow-covered Rila Mountains. Two days later, Saunders suggested they have a night out in Sofia. Palfreeman was reluctant, but agreed to go. As they were heading off, he realised he had no form of identification on him, and ran back inside the house. His army ID card was on the kitchen table. Next to it was a pocket knife that Saunders had bought in Samokov. Palfreeman said he made a split-second decision to grab it as he took the card. Claiming innocence ... Jock Palfreeman. This was no Swiss Army knife, but a butterfly knife with a 12.3 centimetre-long blade. In Bulgaria it is not illegal to carry a knife, and they are sold cheaply in tourist shops across the country. Saunders had bought it because he didn't have a knife in the house and needed one, and because this one caught his eye - flashy, cool, and unlike anything he'd seen in England. Simon and Helen Palfreeman were holidaying with Angus when Simon got a call to say Jock was in trouble in Bulgaria. Simon thought Jock was in the UK. With confusion about the detainee's name, there was a chance the man arrested was not Jock. Simon describes himself as cautious and conflict-averse, and as more news filtered through, his instinctive reaction was to put off booking the inevitable flight to Europe, feeling he needed to gather more information. The holiday period meant it was hard to get hold of anyone. But events were moving fast in Sofia. Unfounded claims that the victims had been stabbed in the back fuelled a frenzy of damaging publicity. Potentially critical evidence was not secured from the crime scene. Closed-circuit television recordings from outside the government building where Palfreeman was arrested disappeared. Witnesses were not interviewed, among them the Gypsies. On December 31, Hristo Monov described Palfreeman in the press as a "professional murderer" and a "monster." The judge who heard the bail application that day later told me she believed Palfreeman hated Bulgarians and was "racist." She had decided the Australian was "led by this feeling of superiority" and dangerous. Several days later, Sydney's Daily Telegraph published an allegation by two young men that Jock Palfreeman had once been involved in a knife fight in Australia. The incident had been investigated by police at the time, but no charges were laid. Indeed, Palfreeman had no criminal record. Yet the article would remain in the case file in the grandly named Sofia Palace of Justice, and would be repeatedly referenced by the prosecution, the civil claimants and the media. Even the trial judge mentioned it in an interview with me. When Simon's flight touched down in Sofia on January 6, 2008, thick snow blanketed much of the city. When he went to see Jock in the remand centre, his son made little sense, jumping from one part of the incident to another, with forays into stories about his life in Bulgaria. Jock Palfreeman was battling to reconstruct what had happened and was horrified by the fact that someone had died. Jock knew he had fallen to the ground at some point but that after that everything was a blur. He wanted Simon to connect the dots, and to believe he had done nothing wrong. But over the coming months, Simon struggled to understand what Jock was telling him and why he had taken out a knife that night. Simon wanted corroboration. He wanted evidence and he wanted clarity, all of which Jock found immensely frustrating. Simon and Jock's mother had agreed that Simon would look after Jock while she attended to his distressed siblings. Ultimately, she would make several trips to Sofia. In the meantime, Simon found a Bulgarian lawyer to represent his son. Dinko Kanchev advised Simon to become part of the defence team, which at that stage comprised just the lawyer and Jock. Although he knew nothing about law other than what he had seen in repeats of Perry Mason, Simon took on the role, as it gave him access to Jock whenever he wanted during work hours. But the prospect of examining witnesses, experts and Jock himself filled him with dread. What if he failed his son? Throughout the court proceedings in 2009, Simon and Hristo stood metres from each other at the front of the courtroom. Both fathers were middle-class professionals in suits; both were determined to get justice for their sons. In the Bulgarian version of the inquisitorial legal system, a civil case can be heard simultaneously with the criminal trial. This meant Hristo's role went far beyond what would be acceptable in an Australian criminal trial. As a victim demanding monetary compensation, he was able to play a significant role in how the trial unfolded. This included blocking evidence that supported Jock Palfreeman's version of events. The prosecution wanted a life sentence; Andrei Monov's parents wanted life without parole. Palfreeman pleaded with his father to hire a private detective to find the men he had helped and the missing recording, and badgered him to speak to the Bulgarian press. He argued they should be taking defamation action against media outlets. Simon disagreed, worried they might be misled or misquoted, and wanted to focus on the evidence they did have. "My father can do anything he puts his mind to," Jock tells me. He is the turtle that won the race. I am more the hare that falls asleep under the tree ... I'd like to be more assertive and say, 'Look, there's a truth, let's get it out there.' And my father would say, 'Yes, there's the truth, but we can't push it in their face because when they don't react to you, then we're going to be in a worse situation than we were before.'  As the trial progressed, Simon felt compromised at every level. All my life I've believed in the system. And I think in Australia you more or less can do that. And here I am for the first time faced with a system that I don't have confidence in. He wondered how justice could prevail, but he dared not show that to Jock, who was increasingly dispirited. "It's very hard as a father to ... watch him hurting like that and not be able to do anything about it," Simon said at the time. Partly because I know he's relying on me so much, I feel inadequate. Adding to Simon's worries, Jock seemed to be fixated with helping other prisoners in the various battles they faced in prison and with their cases. The arbitrary application of rules enraged him. "Each time I come, he seems to be more disoriented in time," Simon says. He is more and more focused on day-to-day things. He acknowledges he has an institutionalised mentality. "My father," explains Jock Palfreeman, "has a very high moral standard: he is very principled. He carries the same mentality over here, where the system has no respect for your principles, no respect for morals, no respect for its own laws. The combination of anxiety, uncertainty about when hearings would be held, and the need to fly back and forth between two countries, meant Simon struggled to appear upbeat and positive. Family members worried that Jock did not appreciate what Simon was doing. Simon sensed that Jock was using him as a punching bag to vent his frustration. But when I ask Jock, his response is heartfelt. I love my father. We're a good team. What Simon did not know was that Jock was also working to set up a prisoners' association, to help inmates understand their rights. It was a high-risk plan that involved secret discussions with prisoners he could trust. If the prison authorities found out, they could come down hard on everyone involved. By the end of the trial, Simon was convinced his son had genuinely feared for his life during the incident. As a pathologist, he also believed the forensic evidence was inconclusive. When Hristo gave his final statement to court, he turned to Simon. "Whatever happens, whatever [Jock's] sentence," he said, "you will receive the most horrific verdict - a son a murderer!" When Simon stood to give his summary, he turned to his son. Jock's motive originally was to help [the Gypsy] and then to defend himself. This was an act that I can only describe as heroic. While as a parent I would have preferred that he stayed safe and did not get into trouble, as a human being I am proud that a young man would try to help another person despite the dangerous circumstances. After five years spent researching this case, I have discovered there is more to it than has come out in court. Soon after the trial began, the forensic doctor who performed the autopsy was arrested. It was alleged he was profiting from the improper extraction of body parts for use by a private company. On his way to give evidence at Jock Palfreeman's trial, he was arrested yet again, this time for drink-driving with a blood-alcohol reading of 0.26 in Australian units. Despite now facing two serious charges, he was allowed to give expert evidence in the trial. His evidence was critical to the prosecution case. When the defence asked for a second opinion, it was refused both at trial and at appeal. In an even more bizarre twist, police raided the prosecutor's apartment and arrested her lover, who was allegedly involved in organised crime. The prosecutor had interfered in the arrest, which raised questions about her suitability for the job. Not long after Judge Georgi Kolev found Palfreeman guilty in December 2009, Kolev was elevated, uncontested, to one of the two highest courts in Bulgaria. The move generated debate about cronyism in a legal system that has attracted considerable criticism from the European Union and non-government organisations such as Transparency International. Then one of the young men who had been with Andrei Monov when he died was arrested in relation to an attack on a group of students protesting against conditions in a detention facility for foreigners. To top it off, during the appeal in 2011, a Sydney barrister rang the Bulgarian Embassy in Canberra, alleging Jock Palfreeman had brutally attacked him in 2006. Immigration records show that Palfreeman was not in Australia at the time. The barrister was mistaken, but his allegation sat in the file before the judges, along with the one that had been published in The Daily Telegraph. Eventually, I was given access to the traffic surveillance camera recording. The footage was chilling to watch. The figures are hazy; the moment when Andrei Monov is stabbed is blurred. But moments before that, some movements are clear: Palfreeman is hit in the head, falls to the ground, gets up and tries to escape from the large group of youths that quickly surrounds him. He has always said he does not remember what happened after falling to the ground. He does not remember fleeing and being pursued. Last July, Jock Palfreeman had a victory. A Bulgarian court approved the application that he and three other prisoners submitted for the establishment of the obliquely named Bulgarian Prisoners' Rehabilitation Association as a non-government organisation. Bulgarian human-rights advocate Krassimir Kanev says the association is the first of its kind in Bulgaria and describes Palfreeman as a "courageous and charismatic leader." The two men are now working closely with each other, taking cases to the European Court of Human Rights. "I am in prison because I was helping other people," Palfreeman says. Why am I doing this? Because I still want to help people. Simon's sense that his son "walks the talk" still fills him with pride. But his fears for Jock's well-being have not diminished. On January 13 this year, Palfreeman began a hunger strike after the prison drastically reduced the amount of time he can use a computer. Prisoners are not given access to the internet, but Palfreeman is enrolled in an arts degree at Sydney's Macquarie University and needs to read the resource material that is sent to him on a disk, and to type essays. Neither Jock nor Simon know why his access has been reduced. Kanev says it is probably payback for Jock Palfreeman's advocacy on behalf of some prisoners who had been bashed by guards. He says Sofia Central is among the worst prisons he has visited in Eastern Europe. It's a kind of a living death. It's an inhuman condition of detention essentially. Australia and Bulgaria are both signatories to the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons, and the Palfreemans want Jock to serve his sentence in Australia so he can be near his family. Kanev says transfer is essential on human-rights grounds and Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs has instigated proceedings with the Bulgarian government, but little progress has been made so far. Simon Palfreeman has booked yet another ticket to Europe. Sofia is now bitterly cold and an icy wind whistles through the broken window in Cell 17. Jock fears the Bulgarian authorities will refuse a transfer out of spite. Simon can only hope that his son is wrong. Belinda Hawkins is a journalist with ABC TV's Australian Story. Her book about the Palfreeman case, Every Parent's Nightmare, will be published by Allen & Unwin on February 27. Lead-in image by Dobrin Kashavelov. This article originally appeared in Good Weekend.