Thane,

A lot of things came back to me after I had a chance to read the first version of this story.
Below, marked in red are my changes. If I had more time there would be a lot more memories
returning. Maybe the additions and changes will add something to what you already have. Its
24 pages and I hope you are not bored by it. This is the last and there won’t be anymore
coming from me unless you ask. Again, please forgive all the typos. There is really so little
time and resources to print this out and read it as carefully as I would like. Also excuse the
poor metaphors and occasional soap box I choose to stand on. Sometime I forget this is not
speakers’ corner at Hyde Park and get carried away.

Again I thank you for the interest of the Toronto Star in my family and me. Maybe someone
will find our continued suffering to be unjustified and will find a way to help. I have written
so many pleading letters to Canada’s politicians and few ever write back. Clearly they have
never been to a prison the likes of those in Bulgaria or else they simply don’t care, neither
about me or any other Canadian who really needs their help.

THE SOFIA CENTRAL PENITENTIARY

SOFIA BULGARIA
FOREIGN PRISONERS SECTION
Getting to Bulgaria

My odyssey as a Canadian about to move through the bowls of Bulgaria’s judicial and penal
system started on September 2nd 1996. This is almost exactly seven months to the day after I
was arrested at Frankfurt International Airport by German police.

The German’s arrested me on February 7th 1996. I was arrested because Bulgarian police had
issued an international arrest warrant that alleged I was the head of a Canadian pseudo
religious cult operating out of Vancouver BC.

According to the Bulgarian warrant it was the Canadian police who had informed Bulgarian
authorities that I was heading up an international money laundering operation in Europe and
in Bulgaria. According to the warrant I had succeeded in defrauding 9,500 Bulgarian citizens
by getting them to place 16,000,000 USD in cash “trust deposits” with my company.
Allegedly I later embezzled the money by wiring it through the Caribbean to accounts of the
“cult” in Vancouver, BC Canada.

Later, this all proved to be nothing but libelous nonsense and formed the legal grounds for one
of the lawsuits in BC.

On July 22 2002, some 6 years, 5 months and 15 days after my arrest the Sofia City Court of
Appeal acquitted me of the original 1996 allegations. I had been on trial, without a “final”
charge for more than 6 years.

The Court of Appeal dismissing the lower court conviction was positive only in that it
exonerated of the fraud and embezzlement of public funds and by confirming the original
accusations and charges to be legally impossible and factually untrue.
It could not end there, I had already been in prison nearly 7 years. My imprisonment had to
somehow be justified and so the Court of Appeal decided to bring a new charge and “re-
qualified” the facts and charged me with one count of embezzlement. The amount I was
alleged to have misappropriated was “in real money” about 165,000 USD. These are
corporate funds that belonged to the Bulgaria Company I controlled. There was no money
involved that belonged to any individuals. I had incorporated the Bulgarian company in 1993
and owned 75% of its shares and controlled the other 25%. This was not the crime for which
the German’s extradited me. A fact that bothers me to this moment is the failure of Canada
Foreign Affairs to engage the German government in reevaluating Bulgarian compliance with
the terms of extradition.

The crime of embezzlement according to Bulgarian law is a felony and is punishable by

imprisonment from 10 to 30 years. In Germany and Canada embezzlement is punishable by
no more than 10 years.

At the time in Bulgaria it was only murder that carried a heavier sentence of 15 to 20 years,
life or the death penalty which at was under moratorium.

I was sentenced to serve 17 years in a maximum security prison. An earlier court had sentence
me to serve a 23 year sentence. This was set aside with my acquittal by the Court of Appeal.
This is a big improvement, but it is still the heaviest sentence for embezzlement ever given to
a non-government official in modern Bulgarian judicial history.

I was and remain today the ONLY businessman ever convicted of such a crime in Bulgaria.

On September 2nd of 1996 I left a German prison hospital and started my journey to Sofia
Bulgaria. The plane was a Soviet era Tupolev 156. I was accompanied by 4 plain cloths
policemen and 1 doctor. The German prosecutor had asked for the doctor because he was
going to have me forcefully removed from my hospital bed and then deliver me to the
Bulgarian police on a stretcher. This time the German prosecutor was not going to be
embarrassed as he had been before by a prison doctor. The Bulgarian police had come top
collect me the month, August. They returned to Bulgaria empty handed because a German
prison doctor had only hours before told the German prosecutor that my health would not
allow her to approve the extradition.

I will never forget her, and the last words she said to me; “I hope this buys you enough time
so Canada can do something”. So did I, but I did not know then that my arrest by Bulgaria
was because of a Canadian police officer’s lies and a written Canadian RCMP request for me
to be prosecuted in Bulgaria. There wasn’t going to be any help that day or for the next few
years coming from Canada.

This time the German Prosecutor was not going to be embarrassed by either a doctor or my
hunger strike. So he decided to have order German police to remove me from the hospital by
force.

On the morning of my departure two uniformed German police arrived and ordered hospital
staff to remove my IV. I remember the German police officers swearing at me as I stood up
off then bed and not so gracefully passed out in front of them. I can remember falling for what
seems like minutes of the world spinning around as the hospital floor approached. It was with
a thump that I hit the floor. It sounded very much like a rather large sack of potatoes. Before I
completely lost consciousness I heard the words “Slavic pig” and “bastard Jew” uttered by
these two German policemen. It was said with a lot of great contempt. Obviously they were
not looking forward to carrying this rather large Canadian into the back seat of their car. The
“Jew” surprised me because, on the advice of my father I was not to tell anyone that my
grandparents and father were Jews.

Very unceremoniously they ordered two convicts to grab one leg each and another two to grab
an arm each and carry me unconscious out of the hospital to the waiting police car. I later
regained consciousness in the police car and asked the policemen why they were treating me
so harshly. They explained that I was a Bulgarian and could not stay in Germany. I later
learned they believed this because the Bulgarian Prosecutor had written the German
Prosecutor that I was “a Bulgarian citizen hiding behind a Canadian passport”. To the
German’s I was never a “real Canadian”. I have never been a citizen of Bulgaria. Once more
the Bulgarian Prosecutor had lied the same way he had lied in all the documents submitted to
German police.

The Bulgarian Balkan Airlines plane and police were waiting for me at the Frankfurt
International Airport. The whole rear of the Balkan airlines flight, some 100 seats, was left
intentionally empty. There was only me, the doctor and 4 representatives of the Bulgarian
police. The flight was uneventful and I still refused to eat.

Arriving At Sofia International Airport

Later that evening we arrived at Sofia International Airport.

The security was like something out of a Tom Clancy novel. The plane taxied to an isolated
part of the airport tarmac. When the plane stopped it was surrounded by at my best count 2
armored vehicles, 4 or 5 police jeeps with their lights flashing and 50 masked policemen from
a interior police Special Forces swat team. Each wearing a mask, a bullet proof vest and
carrying a Kalashnikov. In turn they were surrounded by hundreds of curious airport
employees.

Bulgarian TV journalists had been kept away from the plane. Also, the other passengers were
not allowed to disembark until after I was carried down to the waiting ambulance.

With sirens wailing we departed the airport. About 10 minutes later I arrived at the special
military hospital that would be my home the next 14 days. I would be kept there under heavy
24 hour guard by two masked armed guards, one in the room and one outside my door. They
were rotated every 2 hours.

I stilled continue refusing food. So the next day police investigator “Georgiev” visited me
with his interpreter and said “the Canadian consul wants to see you. But, if you want to see
the Canadian consul then you better accept being fed intravenously”.

I agreed, in hind sight I should never have agreed. He was bluffing, but I was already weak
and a lot of the fight had drained out of me.
The next day I got to see the Canadian consul. It was a wasted and useless visit. I remember
him holding my hand and telling me everything would be “OK”. When I think about that
moment I can only recall how pathetically meek the Consul was, he simply did not project
any authority. The Bulgarian police investigator walked all over him and there was nothing I
could do.

To see my lawyers meant I had to stay on intravenous. To send letters to my family meant or
get a bible or other books required that I the pills they gave me. Eventually I stopped losing
weight, and was removed the minute Bulgarian doctors could report they had stabilized my
health.

More than Two Years of Solitary Confinement

It was mid-September of 1996, the 16th I think, when I was removed from the military hospital
to solitary confinement. These facilities are operated by the Bulgarian federal police. They are
dark places whose very appearance announces the brutality and dehumanizing you can expect.

The cells are windowless 1 and ½ meter by two and ½ meter coffins illuminated 24 hours a
day by nothing more than a 40 watt yellow light bulb. It never goes off. The cell doors are
made of heavy wood reinforced with steel. They have a huge single sliding dead bolt lock that
opens with the kind of key used to open the dungeon doors in bad “B” rated horror flicks.

When hearing the sound of the cell locks being opened or closed I remember wondering to
myself “is life imitating art”? Or had the Bulgarian architects of this chamber of horrors
borrowed its design directly from Hollywood? The sound was the same as those old black and
white movies I watched as a kid in Canada.

If the idea of this place was to scare you, well it worked really well. Particularly after what I
saw waiting for me in the cell. Six metal bunks, no mattresses and only one blanket. I can
remember today exactly the words I spoke to myself that day as the door locked shut behind
me “welcome to your new home Mike”.

Prisoners are not allowed anything to help them pass the hours, days, weeks, month and even
years. No books, no wrist watch or clock of any kind, no pen or paper, no exercise and no
contact with anyone except the police investigator and occasionally your lawyer or the
Canadian consul.

You are completely alone except for the disembodied voices outside your room. I was alone,
and would be alone for the next 25 months.

My experiences there are so surrealistic as to seem more like nightmares rather than real
experiences. For the last 8 years nightmares have greeted me when I try to sleep and always
end by waking me every morning. After so many years I still find it hard to cope with them at
5:30 am, but I have to and still have to.

Thankfully these memories have receded to some remote part of my psyche that allows them
to only reappear as nightmares. But you really can’t ever forget what happens to you in such
ugly and violent places. It was not that the beatings were so bad. Those only resulted in the
occasion cut and more often nothing only in shallow bruises. Physical scarring is temporary
and heals. But your heart and mind are permanently scarred by the how and when of the
beatings.

In the middle of your sleep the door to your cell opens, the heavy bolt giving a loud metallic
“crack” and then “thunk” as it slides and comes to rest on one side. Suddenly and without any
other sound the faceless devils enter your cell. You never know on what night you will have
visitors. There is barely time to wake up and before you open your eyes the faceless devils
have covered your head with a blanket and then it starts.

The muted “thud, thud, thud” of more than one truncheon as it bounces off the thin fabric
separating your flesh from the cold hard rubber. Somehow the pain some is disassociated
from that sound. You lay there frightened but in an uncomprehending stupor as you wonder at
what is happening to you. There is a disassociated from the event. You are not a participant,
but an observer trying to grasp the moment. There is a state of complete disbelief as you
“watch” someone being mercilessly beaten, but that someone is you.

It ends just as suddenly as it began. The masked devils leave like dark fantoms, shadows that
could speak. there words still resounding in my mind “don’t say anything to anyone or else it
will get worse”. So you lay there, unable to move, being beaten can be exhausting. You can’t
get off the bed, in fact you don’t want to. First because it hurts too much and second because
its easier to let dark clouds of unconsciousness to consume you and pretend you are only
going back to sleep. The next morning you will wonder if it was only some kind of a bad
dream. But the pain and the bruises prove otherwise. You gone on with your day alone with
your only the demons left behind.

I learned there won’t be any lawyers seeing me after the beatings. My isolation could last a
few days or possibly even weeks. The bruises have to heal first.

The only person I would be sure to see is the police investigator, “Georgiev”. He is going to
ask me the same question again and again “Where is the money?”. I will give him the same
answer “I don’t know”, wrong answer. It means I will have another “encounter”.

There are other solutions if you decided to continue to resist in giving the “right” answers, the
injections and pills.

I was told these were only to “calm you down” and to “help you sleep”. The guards always
put the pill in your mounth and watched you swallow. You had to take them. But instead of
sleeping I got only nightmares. My heart would race so hard that it was impossible to sleep. I
remember once I stayed awake for three days.

At first you cannot figure any of this out. It takes time, and other prisoners whispering
through the cracks of their cell doors “don’t take the pills”. Enventually I figured figure it but
it took time. Police Investigator Georgiev is a real piece of work. He has an R.C.M.P. plaque
that he proudly displays on his office wall. He got it for working with the R.C.M.P. on
something or other. Maybe he got it for having me arrested by German Police as R.C.M.P.
Sgt. Doornbos had asked Georgiev to do back in May and July of 1995. I did not know that at
the time.
Maybe it was for how Georgiev had treated other Canadian’s in his custody. I really don’t
know or care. All I know is that this guy was an alcoholic, a brute and a corrupted liar. At one
point Georgiev called me down and introduced me to a lawyer that he said “could help”.

This was the first time Georgiev had ever left me alone in his office with an attorney. Believe
me by this time I was ready to hear anybody who could “help”. It turned out that if my wife
could arrange a bribe of 60,000 USD to be paid to the lawyer for Georgiev then I would get
me released either on bail or under house arrest.

From 1996 to 1998 it was police investigators and prosecutors who both arrested you and then
also decided if you would or would not be released on bail. There was no court or judges then,
no judicial control at all. You were at the mercy of men like Georgiev, and he could keep you
in jail indefinitely. So I wrote a letter to be faxed to my wife and her Dad. My in-laws are the
only people I could think of that could borrow that kind of money on short notice. The deal
fell apart. Later I learned that my family had put the 60,000 USD together and were prepared
to pay it into escrow with an attorney in the USA. Georgiev could pick the lawyer. The deal
was the money would be paid once the lawyer obtained notification from Canada Foreign
Affairs that I had been released. But Georgiev and his lawyer wanted the money in cash and
in Sofia, Bulgaria. My family said no. That was the right decision.

It is easy to be deceived and lulled into compliancy. Everybody, the guards, the doctors and
the police investigator are so “helpful”. You start to trust them and take for granted that what
they are saying is true and their intentions only well meaning. But it is all a game to get the
information they want and to control you.

Once I passed a note to a Canadian Consular Official, Jamie Bell, the note said “I am being
drugged”. But nothing happened, so for more than one year the Bulgarians just kept it up. It
was sometime in late 1997 that the beatings and drugging stopped. Suddenly it was over, no
more night time visits. No demons and no angels, I was finally alone with only the
nightmares. I think it was August, I can’t really remember. Nothing from those two years in
solitary seems real anymore, except the nightmares that still terrify me each night.

I survived those years by seeking solace in my God. I expressed my anguish and experiences
in hundreds of drawings and hundreds of written pages in my diary. It was hard, and I can’t
say that I came out of there normal. Then again I wonder if I had been “normal” when I went
in. After two years of solitary you tend wonder if you ever were normal. The human condition
and life as you once knew it become nothing but abstracts to be discussed among those inner
voices that we all have but who remain silent until called upon or released by a need to
survive or a tragedy you could never have imagined.

Like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra I could speak to each sun rise and sunset that I could not see but
knew was there. I could tell myself that I am stronger in spirit and in body than those who
seek to break me, so I can’t be broken. I accept the beatings silently and abuses without
complaint. But this is not resignation, it is defiance expressed through indifference to the
harshness of my circumstance. I refused to act like the others who rant and rave at their
tormentors. I am not a caged animal so I can put myself above those who abuse me. I became
indifferent, aloof and begin to rejoice in my isolation. The concept of death is that of a
welcome friend. My nightmares and visions were the reality, and not the clumsy little box that
failed to trap my spirit and mind, holding instead a body that was no longer significant.

But unlike Nietzsche’s Zarathustra God was not dead to me, but became alive and was all
around me. He was and remains in everything, the air, the dust, and even the darkness. Each
time I closed my eyes I could see and hear Him. God became a living friend who spoke to me
through me.

Like the legendary Hercules peeling off layer after layer of his immortality until finally
discovering he is only mortal. I became peeling off layer after layer of my mortality until
finally discovered that we are all immortal. When I reflect on that time I am amazed, first
because I lived it and second at how much truth I uncovered and was revealed in the torment.

Then in September of 1998 it ended and a new journey began.

Arriving at the Sofia Central Penitentiary

I first arrived at the Sofia Central Penitentiary sometime in September of 1998. I was both
frightened and relieved. The fear came from not knowing what to expect, the relief came from
knowing that maybe soon there would be a charge, a defense, then a trial, finally home and an
end to the nightmare. Things did not work out that way.

To get to the Sofia Central Penitentiary or SCP for short, you have to drive through the
pothole-riddled streets of downtown Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.

The trip from the city center starts at the luxurious Sheraton Hotel. That “palace” is almost
directly across from the criminal court house in whose dungeon like cellars I was to spend
hundreds of days and thousands of hours waiting for my criminal trial to finish.

Getting to the prison requires you to meander around city blocks of old grey and soot covered
buildings that are in stark contrast to the clean modern facilities of the Sheraton. You can see
numerous unfinished high rise apartment buildings. Some started more than 15 years ago.
Like everything in the late 80’s the construction, like the country, became frozen in time the
money having ran out.

The unfinished buildings, poor infrastructure and dirty streets are communist era monuments.
They are memorials to a past that refuses to die before the promises of democracy become
more than only unrealized dreams.

Nowadays, when making the trip to the SCP you will see few Russian cars. Unlike the days of
the communist era there are if anything far too many cars in old streets and far too few places
to park those cars.

Like the overcrowded streets of downtown Sofia the Bulgarian prison system is also
overcrowded with some 10,000 inmates.

If the Bulgarian newspapers are to be believed then there are another 50,000 men and women
waiting to enter the prison system. There is simply no where to “park” them, their criminal
trials go on for years stalled within an overcrowded judicial system unable to move criminal
cases out as fast as they come in.
In the past Bulgaria’s prisons were filled with political prisoners and the big criminals,
Bulgaria’s capitalists and corrupted state officials. Now Bulgaria’s prisons are filled with its
poorest citizens, the “gypsy’s” or Roma as they are called. They become “criminals” because
in Bulgaria a gypsy has very little economic opportunity and therefore very little choice
except to steal. There are several well publicized cases where the courts have sentenced a
Roma’s to 90 or more years for stealing chickens.

Nobody outside Bulgaria believes this to be possible, but it is and I dare anyone to try and
investigate what happens to these men and women who have become lost within the
Bulgarian prison system.

Like the courts the traffic towards the prison is also often stopped dead in its tracks.
Thankfully it only takes to 10 to 15 minutes to clear up and not years.

I have made the trip from the center of Sofia so many times that I have forgotten exactly how
many. But I won’t soon forget those trips.

Fifteen prisoners are packed into an unventilated and windowless vehicle designed for only 6.
It is at the point of a bill club or with a boot in the ass that the transport police can succeed in
cramming 15 men into a 20 year old Russian panel van designed for only 6.

You “sit” one on top of the other and can barely breathe. The lack of adequate ventilation, and
exhaust fumes means that if its summer then at least one and sometime as many as three men
will pass out or puke. To protest is useless.

Each year from 1998 to 2002 the guards would explain to me that there was simply not
enough money to buy additional fuel. The convoy police only had enough fuel for the one trip
there and back and no more. I haven choosen to believe them and accept that overcrowded
vehicles are not their fault, they are just following orders. In 2003 they the Ministry of Justice
Bulgaria received from the European Union donations of new panel vans. The Convoy Police
has new trucks but still no money for fuel. So we are still packed into these new vans like
before. It’s a little better but not muck.

So you just pray that the traffic is light so you can to the SCP before anything worse happens.

Once, in the summer of 2000, another prisoner traveling with me had passed out. We carried
him out of the van, so much blood had drained from his face that his appearance was the stone
face of a man having seen the face of the Gorgon Medusa. His breathing was shallow and
irregular.

Once he had pulled him out of the van I took over his care. I had to because no one of the
convoy police knew or was interested in trying to revive the guy. All I could do was to yell at
the police to get some cold water, a doctor and a stretcher. In the mean time I did what I
could. He later recovered in hospital.

It was later that I learned that on that same day he had been sentenced to two consecutive life
sentences for a double homicide. I guess I’d have passed out to.
My First Days at the Sofia Central Penitentiary

I can recall a lot of unsettling scenes since having first arrived at the SCP in September 1998.

In 1998 I was at the farthest possible point away from my family and alone in one of the
toughest fights of my life. I had not seen my wife and son for nearly three years and was
severely depressed. Now I was now about to embark on life in a maximum security prison
once housing Bulgaria’s equivalent of the death row.

No experience could be worse than what I had already gone through the preceding 2 years in
solitary confinement. But I was not prepared for the fact that I would be spending another 6
years in a Bulgarian prison. I was also not prepared for the indifference of Bulgarian prison
officials that I was about to encounter at the SCP. I was even less prepared at how little
Canada Foreign Affairs could or would do to protect a Canadian citizen outside of Canada.

Originally, I had though the prison would be a more humane and better organized place than
the “torture chambers” of the arrest facilities.

The SCP is a place where a man who is still a human being might have is to spend years or
possibly all of what remains of his natural life. Surely Bulgarian correctional services people
would have some consideration towards protecting the mental and physical health of the
inmates and their rehabilitation? I was wrong.

The word “rehabilitation” does not exist in the lexicon of any Bulgarian penitentiary. Only the
phrases “harsh, punishment” and “you have no rights” are repeated as a part of the holy
mantra for prison “social workers” and administrators.

In 1998 the Sofia Central Penitentiary had a reputation of being one of the strictest, least
tolerant and most corrupted and therefore “expensive” prisons in Bulgaria.

There has been some improvement since I first arrived in 1998. However, at a certain level
corruption within the prison systmen is still a problem although not as pervasive at the lower
level as before.

Tolerance and indifference are real problems. There is serious resistance at all levels of the
SCP to programs designed to “rehabilitate” prisoners, particularly foreign citizens. Attempts
at improving living conditions and facilities are also resisted by higher level Bulgarian
Correctional Service officials in charge of all Bulgaria’s penitentiaries. I know because I have
struggled with them to bring about change.

The SCP is intended only house repeat offenders, and the Bulgarian version of “death row”.

In 1998 Bulgaria still had the death penalty and a number of the guys housed in the “1 st
Prisoners Ward” were still waiting to find out if Bulgaria would repeal the death penalty.

The SCP has another distinction. It is the only prison designated by the Minister of Justice
Bulgaria as the facility to house foreign citizens accused or convicted of crimes in Bulgaria.
All foreign prisoners eventually end up here. It does not matter if you are a first time offender
or are soon to be released. If you are not a Bulgarian then you must serve your time within the
walls of this maximum security prison.

The SCP is not a place that a first time Bulgarian offender would himself. Only a Canadian or
other non-Bulgarian is placed in a maximum security notwithstanding the nature of his crime
or his sentence.

The SCP is an old prison. My first impressions of it were like a combination medieval castle
and grey drab collapsing cement tomb. The paint, where there is any, is all peeling off the
exterior and interior walls. The metal frames of the doors and metal beds are all bear rusting
steel. There is cement and plaster dust everywhere. The air is filled with it; you breathe it and
get it into your cloths. Nothing you do will ever get rid of it.

The ceilings in the cells and in the prison common areas all had cobwebs that looked like they
had years to grow. Nobody apparently interested in removing them.

The prison is also infested with cockroaches, and rats.

On my first night here I can remember that I was lying in bed and felt something crawling
over me. When I woke up and opened my eyes the first thing I saw directly above my top
bunk was a black pulsating mass on the ceiling. It seemed alive and as it moved in and out of
the cracks in the concrete above me. They were cockroaches, thousands of them and several
had fallen from the ceiling into my bed and onto me. I had never seen so many cockroaches in
my life. Apparently they had made their home, by the thousands, between the reinforced
concrete slabs that make up each cell.

One night I remember somebody screaming when one or more cockroaches fell on his face.
Maybe he swallowed one. During the day you could only see one or two in the cracks. Later I
would learn this would become a near daily event and these conditions were not limited to the
1st Prisoners Ward. The SC P is infested with them and you could not get rid of them.

My first weeks at the SCP were to be spent in the 1st Prisoners Ward. It is not only the ward
for lifers and death row inmates but also the receiving center for new inmates of the SCP.

I arrived at the SCP with a few boxes and some bags of personal belongings. These were
immediately taken from me when I was placed into a holding cell with 3 other recent arrivals.
We were allowed only the cloths on our back, soap, a tooth brush and toothpaste. For drinking
water we were given an old plastic Coca Cola bottle filled with water from the sink at the
common toilet at the end of the hall. We were to be locked up for 24 hours and able to acess
the toilets three times a day. Each cell of 4 inmates was given a total of 5 minutes in the
toilets. There are no showers here.

Most of the inmates are uneducated. Here no body speaks any English, and communicating
with prison officials and guards is restricted to Bulgarian or waiving your hands around in an
attempt at sign language and grunting out a form of Esperanto. When you ask for someone
who speaks your language the “social worker” only tells you to “you are in Bulgaria so learn
Bulgarian”.
The cells of the 1st Prisoners Ward are on the 4th story of the prison. Each cell is about 1 and
half meters wide and maybe, just barely less than 2 meters long. It has a small high window
that is glassless and is always open to the elements. The cell overlooked an interior parking lot
that holds seized vehicles and the trucks that would be taking me back and forth to court for
the next 5 years. This is surrounded by a high concrete fence.

The cell is illuminated by a single 60 watt bulb. There are 4 metal bunks or cots on top of
cots.

I was placed among strangers. Each of us was bewildered and baffled. After more than two
years of solitary confinement I found this new “company” to be a jarring experience and an
unfamiliar new reality. It was not pleasant for me. I found myself paranoid and unable to sleep
the first 48 hours. After a time I was simply forced to resign myself to the situation. Two days
had passed before I allowed myself to collapse into one of the metal cots.

The cells are concrete bunkers and isolation a very very effective means of controlling
another human being. Control is everything and when when you first arrive the staff wants
you to immediately control you. However, none of them spoke English and my Bulgaria left
something to be desired. Communication was a problem and so there were going to be some
problems. By the guards waiving their Billy Clubs around you was how they let you know
they do not tolerate any back talk, foolishness or violations of their rules.

On the first day the guards take you down to a basement facility where you are striped naked
and required to take a shower with lye soap and get your hair cut. I was scared to death and
for good reason.

This was not the first time I had been taken to a basement for a shower. On more than one
occasion I had been taken to the basement for a “shower” at the National Investigative Police
facility during the two plus years of my solitary.

The first time I had not thought anything of it. The guards told me there was no hot water so I
would have to shower in the basement. I was handcuffed and the two guards would lead me
down the 5 flights of stairs through a twisted maze of doors into the basement. We arrived at a
single room with a shower. The handcuffs were undone and I was told to undress, I did.

I remember how one of the guards said he had to go and my shower would have to wait until
he got back. They would have to handcuff me until then. So one of the guards took hold of
one hand and handcuffed me. The other guard then told me to use both my hands to grab an
overhead steam or water pipe. I remember asking the guard why and he said “just do it” as he
slammed the Billy Club against one of the concrete walls. Somehow I knew what would come
next.

Naked and standing on my toes I grabbed the pipe. As I did that one of the guards pulled over
an old rickety wooden chair. Standing on the chair the guard then took the free end of the
handcuffs and draped it over the pipe and handcuffed my other hand. He got down and put the
chair back in its place and then they both laughed. I can still hear their laugh as they both left.

I would remain that way, cold and naked for maybe half an hour, maybe less or more, there
was simply no way for me to know. My toes were stretched out and I would shift my weight
from one leg to the other in an effort to relieve the cramping in one calf. Then I would stand
on one leg until it became too exhausted and then shift back to the other leg. Then both legs
and then I repeated the process again and again Sometime I would give my legs a rest by
holding that pipe with both my hands and hanging from it for a few minutes or was it
seconds? I can’t remember. It is as impossible to remember and it was impossible to let
yourself hang from the pipe using only the handcuffs, it cut into the skin and hurt far too
much.

After a while the guards came back and said nothing except “sorry” and that I could take my
shower now. Over the next 14 months this would happen to me a few more times and
occasionally it would be accompanied with some punches to my abdomen, kickboxer style
kicks to my thighs and the occasion swat with a plastic truncheon.

At the SCP my fears were not borne out. All I had to do was shower with lye shop and let
them cut my hair.

If anyone knows anything about lye then they know that it burns like hell, or at least this stuff
did and heaven help you if you get it into your eyes. I had a rash for days because of it and
could not get treatment for it.

I recall one of the other new arrivals refused to have his hair cut, we could hear him say no,
and then we heard the Billy Clubs ricocheting off him as the guards made their point. He
wasn’t brought back into the holding cell. Instead the guards came, got his stuff and moved
him into another cell. I did see him some days later, shaved bald and badly cut and bruised
from the beating. He had asked for but been refused treatment. At SCP attempts at violence or
resistance meet only excessive violence. I hear of little violence between the inmates, and that
only because of the consequences.

While you are showering they take your cloths, all your cloths and not just what you were
wearing, and send it to be de-liced. Arrest is a dirty place.

In 1998 the SCP had no toilets or sinks in the holding cells or in any cells of the prison. The
foreigners housed at the SCP still don’t have toilets in their cells, the Bulgarians do.

Each cell has a single red 5 gallon bucket shared between the inmates, in 1998 there were 3
other men in the holding cell with me. We had to use that bucket for all our body functions as
well as a trash receptacle. You are simply were not allowed to leave the cell in order to
defecate. So it’s the bucket.

You are also given your food in the same cell and required to eat it right there near that
bucket.

I cannot describe the smell coming from that bucket. Apparently on that September day of
1998 when I arrived, the previous arrivals had not felt compelled to empty that bucket when
being transferred to another prison ward. There must have been several generations of feces
floating in urine there in this plastic bucket. That first day the guards refused to open the cell
to let me empty it. It had to wait until morning when we were allowed to empty the buckets
and wash up with cold water. The idea of hot water for inmates was alien then and considered
a luxury. That is also true now.
Possibly the most humiliating experience I have ever had in my life had to be defecating into
that bucket in front of the 3 other men who apparently had nothing better to do with their time
except stare. Never in my life would have I considered as entertainment observing how
someone squats above a bucket to defecate. Maybe they were studying my technique in order
to later improve their own. We were not given any toilet paper and had to improvise by
tearing parts of clothing and using it to wipe. There was no place in the cell to wash up and
you had to live with that until the next day.

As a maximum security prison the SCP has a 24 hour lock down. You don’t leave the
common area of your ward. There is 1 hour a day on the parade grounds. You can get out of
lock down only if you can get work.

The Bulgarian government forbids foreigner inmates to work at most prison jobs, these
reserved for Bulgarians only. Foreigners can be employed at piece work and one gets to be a
barber. There are simply no jobs, and those who can get work will only earn between 5 to 15
USD a month, it is hardly worth it.

No one from the 1st Prisoners Ward is allowed to work. From what I know Lifers are not
allowed to work and so sit in their cells 24 hrs a day, it is inhuman.

Years of a 23 hour lock down is dehumanizing and slowly destroys even the strongest of men.
After a while they get sick, usually cancer or tuberculosis and die. I know of three inmates
who have died since I arrived here, and there are probably many more.

In 1998 leaving my cell to go on the parade ground was a new experience for me. I was never
allowed to leave my cell during the two years of my solitary. Once, sometime in 1997, the
Canadian embassy did complain. This forced the Bulgarian guards to take me up to the roof
for a 15 minute walk. The next day I was duly advised by the police investigator that I should
inform the Consul that I had been taken for a 15 minute walk on the roof of the building. I
did, the next day no walk, and the next and so on.

My stay in the SCP holding cell lasted for three or four days, I don’t remember exactly. One
day we were told to dress into prison uniforms and to go down to be assigned to our wards.
This was a real problem in my case. At 6’1” and 110 kilos I am not a small man. There were
no prison uniforms that were big enough. So I was forced into tearing up a prison shirt, jacket
and pants all in an effort to fit into this costume. The guards would have nothing with my
suggestions that I just wear my own cloths. So I was dispatched with the end of the pant legs
stopped high above my ankle and the jacket starched to tearing at the shoulders and sleeves. I
looked like an American hillbilly going into town with his best hand me down suit. I
remember exactly thinking that the TV character “Jethro” from the Beverly Hillbillies had
nothing on me.

As a foreigner I should have been placed in the 13th Prisoners Ward, this ward is designated
only for foreigners who are still awaiting a sentence. I was told by other prisoners that it is a
much better place, there is a common area with some movement and socializing is allowed
between the inmates. Also, there were two Canadian there at the time and I was really looking
forward to meeting someone from Canada. One of them was from Vancouver, BC, my
hometown.
But it wasn’t going to happen. When it was my turn, the prison Deputy Warden, a Mr.
Konstatinov, said that I was to remain under heavy guard and supervision in the 1st Prisoners
Ward. It was later explained to me that the SCP Warden considered me a “security risk” to the
prison and myself, so Konstatinov would not allow me to be placed in the general population
of foreigners.

I was crushed and angry because the other three foreigners with me had been moved to the
13th Prisoners Ward, only I was left behind.

That same day I was to be moved into another isolation cell of the 1st Prison Ward, this time
with only one other inmate. “Victor” was a Russian on trial for first degree murder. He had
been hired to and did kill a Bulgarian businessman. I thought this was unusual company for a
Canadian businessman charged with an alleged fraud and embezzlement. I figured there was
probably some hidden message here and I had better be careful. So I started to regularly cast
quick glances over my shoulder and sleep with one eye open. If I could sleep.

Victor was released in September 2003, only a few months ago. The Bulgarian justice system
had sentenced him to 8 years for premeditated murder; he had served just over 4 and
Bulgarian authorities did not see any danger in releasing him on parole and deporting him
back to the Ukraine.

Since coming to the SCP I have seen several convicted murders receive sentences less than
my 17 years. I have watched more than my share of accused murders released on bail and
convicted murders released on parole or deported to their own countries. I still sit here and
wonder what my fate will be.

My days and nights on the 1st Prisoners Ward were filled with the sounds of men hollowing
like demented wolves staring up at a full moon. These were mostly drug addicts who without
a daily fix had no way to subdue or otherwise satisfy the demons that had suddenly come
alive as they went cold turkey. Beatings would eventually bring their silence but never peace.
These were some seriously deranged people and the SCP has no psychiatric facility or
competent psychiatrists to deal with them. They were either beaten or drugged in silence.

One of the more difficult and depressing experiences I had during this time was the
knowledge that I was in the same ward as men who had pending death sentences or life
sentences. I would go out to the parade grounds with them every day. The atmosphere was
overwhelmingly depressing. Mixing violent men with those inmates accused of lesser non-
violent crimes is and remains a practice at the SCP as at other Bulgarian penitentiaries.

Inmates are not segregated according to their crime or sentence but are instead all grouped
together. I had thought this practice long abandoned by European countries. Apparently not,
and what’s worse is that the atmosphere of fear and tension this creates. It is done
intentionally. This practice was created by the prisons administrators and is fostered by the
Bulgarian Ministry of Justice. No violate and first time offenders are mixed with repeat
offenders as a means of control using fear to create informers in the cell blocks. This is true
even among the foreign inmates. Those inmates who have short sentenced and expect to be
paroled are used to spy on other inmates.

At the SCP the word of an inmate is never believed by prison officials unless it is to rat on
another inmate in exchange for “better treatment”. I have seen inmates “set up to take falls”.
Some guards, “social workers” and prisoner trustees get together and plan to stash drugs or
money on an inmate so he can be disciplined. This happens whenever an inmate stands up to
the authority in the prison.

When at the 1st Prisoners Ward I befriended a Bulgarian prisoner, “Krassi”. In October he had
been setup to take a fall for gambling and carrying money, both serious offenses that would
ruin his chances for parole later this year. According to Krassi, some of the deputy wardens
and his social worker did not want to see him released. The only way to prevent it was to
convict him for some minor infraction. So they “caught” him gambling and wrote a report that
was wholly untrue.

I respect Krassi because he did not resign himself to this like some other inmates would have.
He collected evidence and witnesses then sued the prison in a civil court and WON! The court
found the allegations untrue and the prisons actions unwarranted, so the charges were
dropped. The Wardens were livid and they immediately ordered Krassi be moved to another
prison. This was done only to keep the “virus” of fighting back from spreading to other
prisoners at the SCP. They need not have worried, most of the Bulgarian inmates here are not
like Krassi, and he could read and write unlike most of the other Bulgarian inmates. This is
also true for most foreign inmates.

I remember there were occasional visits from international observers. The prison officials
would lock us up and the guards tell us to be silent. Then these inspectors from the EU would
come. The SCP let them meet prison trustees who told them how the SCP was ideal and much
improved. Of course nobody thought to ask me or the other inmates who were not so
“trusted”. We might have spoken the truth. This is still true today. I have never once seen an
international observer allowed to conduct a spot inspection of the SCP. They are always
turned back at the doors and told to return later. By the time they return the cells and common
areas are cleaned up, even hurriedly painted. The “correct” prisoners are made available for
interviews.

My first stay in the isolation of the 1st Prisoners Ward lasted several weeks. I had complained
to Canadian consular officials and my lawyer. The complaints did not work. A small bribe did.

Discretely 500 USD was delivered to then prison Warden “Mr. Hristosov” and I was moved to
the 13th Prisoners Ward. I can’t prove he got the money. But I was moved the day after I paid
it to the inmate who told me what to do.

Later, sometime in 1999 or 2000 there was a scandal involving Warden Hristosov and some
prisoners who apparently bribed him and some guards. Warden Hristosov was dismissed from
his post after being charged for crime also connected with taking money, the story made all
the local papers.

I am not sure the Warden Hristosov was acquitted or reached some sort of settlement with the
prosecutors. But he was removed as Warden of the SCP and is now a practicing criminal
attorney.

I do not condone what Warden Hristosov did then or what he does now as an attorney. But I
can understand it because that’s the way the system in Bulgaria works. Nothing ever gets done
within the “system” by an official just because it is the “right”, the “moral” thing to do or
because it is a “duty” a Bulgarian official has taken an oath to observe.
No, things get done only when and if an inmate or his family can pay for it to get done. If you
can’t then you have to wait until some other official is simply left with no choice except to do
whatever it was he was supposed to do in the first place. That can take years.

Back to Isolation

In November 1999, about two or three weeks after being move out of isolation I was suddenly
moved back into isolation in the 1st Prisoners Ward. This time I was placed into solitary
confinement by Deputy Warden Konstatinov.

On the same day I was moved I had a meeting with the Deputy Ward, and “social worker
Yankulov”, and learned that I was moved into solitary for my personal security and that of the
prison.

Deputy Warden Konstatinov moved me because he had “reports” I would be physically

attacked by other inmates.

At the meeting with him, I argued that the 1st Prisoners Ward is used only to punish inmates
and not protect them. He should place those who were planning to assault me in isolation and
not me. The argument fell on deaf ears.

What really happened was that in October 1998 I had complained to Canada Foreign Affars
about something.

Maybe it was the lack of hot water, or the bribes that had to be paid to some prison officials
(through other prisoners). That was the only way anyone could fix getting a "good" cell. That
means you live with 5 people instead of 10.

Brides and fees was also the only way an inmate could get or use a cell phone to talk with his
family.

From 1998 until early 2003 no inmate in a Bulgarian prison was allowed to make or receive
phone calls, not even to a lawyer. You were completely isolated from everyone. Some inmates
paid and so got what they wanted, even a satellite TV dish and receiver were possible. I know
of one Russian “Mafia Boss” who gota refrigerator, an electric heater for the winter and a
microwave oven.

Everything was possible at the SCP if you had the money to pay. If you paid enough you
could even arrange to have sex with a wife or girlfriend in a room at the hospital or even at
the warden’s office.

Whatever it was that I complained about had resulted in one morning where I was taken to a
separate room and stripped searched by the guards, and then placed into isolation.

At that meeting I got pissed off and in my broken Bulgarian told the warden and the social
worker who had wanted the money to go to hell.

I then advised them that I was going on a hunger strike. They could keep me in isolation for
as long as they wanted.
My hunger strike lasted 43 days before they had to place me in the prison hospital. I
continued my protests until March of 1999, when I really started to look and feel bad. It is a
long time to go without food. I went from 110 kilos to 76 kilos.

The Deputy Warden Konstatinov agreed to return me to the 13th Prisoners Ward and to a cell
with only one other prisoner if I agreed to first end my hunger strike. This happened after a
few "friendly" meetings between Canadian and Bulgarian officials who figured out I might
actually take my hunger strike to its logical conclusion.

The social worker who wanted the bribes was "retired" within a few weeks of my hunger
strike and the prisoner “trustee” working with him transferred to another ward after other
inmates set fire to his cell. That's the story I was given. The fire was real enough.

Foreign Prisoner Wards

At the SCP there are two wards dedicated only to cells housing foreign prisoners. I have lived
in both and the conditions there are equally disturbing.

Here you will find 179 foreign men divided between 20 cells in two groups. The largest group
by far is the Turkish, and then comes the Albanians and citizens of the former Yugoslavia.

There are also some Arabs, Iranians, Iraqis and Afghanis, most of these are here only because
they came as refugees who illegally cross the border into Bulgaria from Turkey.

The seeming good behavior and silence of prisoners is only their own self-delusion and
resignation. They believe their resignation to this situation at the SCP is proof of their bravery.
They deny their helplessness, and choose to believe that everyday something will change and
things will get better.

To me this is nothing but a form of self-denial. It is the state of mind that leads foreign
inmates at the SCP to believe that conditions at the prison are somehow allowing them their
dignity. They seem to forget that we have no toilets or showers in our cells, and that Bulgarian
inmates do. Human dignity and hygiene are serious questions at the SCP. Foreign inmates
have no privacy for body functions. This was true for the whole prison in 1998. Now it is true
only for the foreign inmates. Our cells have not been equipped with sinks, hot and cold water,
flushing toilets or showers.

There are nearly 80 of us who share 10 cells on the third floor of a building that looks as if it
could collapse at the slightest act of Providence.

There is only one shower found in the common toilet area of my ward. The “shower” is
nothing more than a long pipe sticking out from the wall opposite the two holes in the ground
that are the toilets shared by the 80 of us. The toilets and the shower are wide open with no
partitions surrounding them. You use them in full view of the other inmates. There is no
semblance of privacy or hygiene. The shower has no shower head and nowhere to put your
soap. The whole arrangement at the SCP is very primitive and embarrassing. While you are
showering there is an inmate defecating a few feet from you. There is another inmate washing
his dishes or cloths in the sink next to the shower. There is no laundry facility at the SCP, we
have to wash our cloths in discarded plastic buckets previously holding paint. We even have
to pay for these plastic buckets.

It is filthy. The shower and the toilets are within feet of where 80 inmates dump their refuse.
Yes, the room housing the shower and the toilets is also the garbage dump It is infested with
rats, cockroaches, flies and mosquitoes in summer.

These conditions are aggravated by the weather. There is no glass in the barred windows of
the common area. The shower and toilet areas are always exposed to the elements. In winter
you are freezing as you wait your turn at the single shower. Then still wet you have to run to
your cell which frankly is not all that much warmer.

The summers give rise to even more unsanitary conditions. The flies, mosquitoes and
cockroaches are in out force and everywhere. They are drawn by the smell from the open
garbage and toilets.

Imagine 80 men using two holes in the ground that Bulgarian officials call toilets. We are not
supplied toilet paper and there is always an irregular supply of water. Consider that one toilet
is for urinating the other is for defecating and there is no flushing. There are two sinks, and
two facets with cold water only.

The one shower also has an irregular supply of water and often no hot water. That means not
bathing at all or bathing with freezing cold water even in winter.

There is no privacy for our bodily functions and never moment alone. You never have one
moment to yourself where you could say “I am going to be alone for a few minutes”.

Foreign citizens are treated by the Bulgarian prison system as subhuman and forced to live
that way. I think dogs in Canada’s SCPA’s are treated better than we are.

At the SCP you are living in damp concrete buildings and with 6 to 12 men per cell. Lights
flicker and moisture seeps down the walls.

Each cell is about no bigger than two and a half to three meters wide and 4 meters long. Some
are a lot smaller. There is that one “red bucket” we each inmate has to share and no toilet or
sink in the cell.

Most inmates come from low income families and are just not as fastidious as they should be
about cleanliness. So each cell is literally overrun with cockroaches no matter where you are.
It is just a fact of life in a Bulgarian prison.

Almost everyone smokes except for me. And I mean smoke, 3 or 4 packs a day. There is not a
single non-smoker cell in the block and we are really overcrowded. I am forced to live with 5
smokers. We are overcrowded and the situation is made worse in the winter because you don’t
dare open a window for fear of loosing the little heat you have. The conditions are unhealthy.

The food is atrocious. The daily food allowance for one inmate in a Bulgarian penitentiary is
0.50 USD per day. Meals are served three times a day. Macaroni for breakfast, rice with
something in it for lunch and beans or lentils for dinner. All served in the water they were
boiled in. There is never any fresh food or desert.
For lunch and dinner there is a single serving of beans, rice or potatoes with something like
Soya tossed in it. Not the kind of Soya you buy in Canada but the chunky kind find you will
find in your dogs food.

There is never any fresh vegetable or fruit. During my eight years here I have only seen once
or twice in a year that you might get a piece of pumpkin or apple that is either over ripe and
already rotting or so hard as to be inedible. There are no breakfast cereals. In terms of
nutrition we never get any fiber here and that is probably the reason why so many of us have
problems with our digestive systems.

I remember, about two years ago they severed fried eggs. Everyone one got so sick they
stopped serving them.

In 2002, for the first time, meat appeared in the diet here. Usually a turkey joint cut up into a
small 30 or 50 gram piece, one per inmate. This is your only source of meat.

Breakfast typically consists of macaroni with sugar, yogurt diluted with water or margarine.
What calories there are come mostly from the vegetable oil that saturates everything the
kitchen here preapres. There is no nutritional benefit from this food.

Each Friday we receive a fish portion. I had always been told by some of the workers in the
prison kitchen that the fish and meat were not intended for human consumption but for animal
food. The fish and meat arrive in unmarked boxes and are bought from suppliers who supply
the fish and meat products for dog and cat food. This makes sense since I know it is
impossible to feed a man a healthy meal with meat, vegetable and desert on less than 0.50
USD per day.

Not only is the food at the SCP utterly lacking in nutritional value but often it is also
disgusting. On more than one occasion I have found human hair, pieces of rat feces or a
cockroach in the food. There is no concern about cleanliness. Cockroaches are often cooked
in with the food. Usually, with beans, the prisoners will through out the water and wash the
beans first. You are liable to have cramps or worse if you don’t. The beans and rice are always
severed with the same water they were boiled in.

Here you eat with metal spoons. You do not have the luxury of a fork and knife, ever.

The foreign inmates who can afford it never eat the prison food and prefer to have their
families send them food. You are allowed two 10 kilo packages of food per month, more if
you wait until the visits. This is great for the Turkish citizens and those from the former
Yugoslavia. Their families visit them about once a month. So a lot of the prison food
delivered to my ward only finds its way into the trash, nobody is willing to eat it. But there is
no choices for those inmates like me who, being so far away from home and having no family
in Bulgaria to visit them must eat whatever we can get. I am lucky to have made a few friends
here who occasional come and bring me food.

The visiting regime at the SCP is very restrictive. It is twice a month and lasts 30 minutes.
Visits are conducted on fixed days and in groups of 15 inmates. Visitors sometime have to line
up for 6 hours before being allowed to enter the visiting room. Once inside they are required
to on broken old wooden stools or benches removed from the prison auditorium. The seats are
placed in front two wire mesh fences separated by about a meter and a half. There is an old
telephone in front of the visitor and one in front of you.. These rarely work very well so most
people are simply screaming across the space that divides them.

There is no possibility of physical contact with a loved one, and forget conjugal visits. Food
parcels and packages are searched twice. Once when handed in by your visitor and again
when you are called to collect it. You are not allowed any fresh meat or cooking oil. Every
food item is opened, even if in its original packaging. The guards do not show any respect for
the inmates or the food. On a few occasions guards have been reported for stealing cigarettes
cartons and even food of inmates.

Few prisoners at the SCP have their teeth. This is mostly a result of long exposure to this diet.
The lack of fresh food and proteins causes their skin to look shallow and in time their teeth to
fall out.

The prison does not supply us with vitamins as a supplement to the poor diet. Vitamins are not
sold at the SCP canteen. In fact nothing of nutritional value is sold in the canteen except
powered milk. The canned meats are all expired by the time they reach the prison. Obviously
prison inmates in Bulgaria are a market for food products that have an expired self life and
cannot legally be sold any where else.

The same is true for the medicines they give you. If you look closely at the labels you
discover all the stuff has already expired. But most prisoners can’t read, so there is little risk.
Also, you don’t have a real choice.

Bulgarian correctional facilities like the SCP are notorious for the inadequacy of medical
treatment provided prisoners. After having spent nearly 3 months in the prison hospital I had
direct personal experience of the shocking state of medical care. I had men die in the room
next to me. On more than one occasion I watched men die who did not need to die if given the
proper medical care.

Most of these men are allowed to die because they had no money or no family to complain. I
remember one inmate, someone my age. He entered the hospital with two good legs,
septicemias set in after an operation on one leg. They amputated to the knee then up to the
thigh. Later I saw him going to court without any legs. Several months on I learned he had
died.

We also had a Turkish citizen die of a heart attack only because it took the guards two hours
before opening the door to his cell. The other prisoners with him were banging on the door for
hours before the guard showed up. By then it was too late.

Two months ago two Bulgarians died of food poising in the Ward below me. We could here
the banging and yelling of inmates. At lasted for at least an hour before stopping. The next
morning we learned of their deaths. When you ask prison officials they will tell you the
inmate “died in hospital”. We know better. No body from the Bulgaria’s correctional service is
willing to listen. When they do they still do nothing.

Things are really bad at the SCP, particularly for non-Bulgarians who are the last to see any
help coming from SCP officials or the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice. Canadians, like all
foreign inmates, have to pay their way in the SCP.
I have on numerous occasions written challenges to Bulgarian Ministry of Justice Officials to
explain to me why as a Canadian I am expected to pay for everything I need as an SCP inmate
and why nothing has been done in the 6 years I have been at the SCP to improve the living
conditions of foreigner inmates. Yet, the Bulgarian sections of the prison have been renovated
with toilets and showers in the cells.

The Ministry of Justice always answers that there is no money to improve the conditions of
non-Bulgarian inmates. Foreign prison inmates will be the last to see any changes.

Our circumstances are terrible. But as foreign inmates we do the best they can to get along
with each other. However what is lost upon most of the foreign inmates is that we have had to
pay for the paint and plaster to have our cells repaired or that each of us has had to bribe a
Bulgarian prisoner to make the wooden frames for our windows and to steal the glass to put
into those windows.

No one of my fellow inmates wants to complain of or publicly recount the fact that every
piece of furniture in our cells had to be bought from another inmate and paid for with
cigarettes or hidden cash. This is true for everything except the rusting metal cots that we each
painted with paint stolen by the Bulgarian inmates and sold to us.

Even the mattresses we sleep on were paid for, even if they are only stuffed with old rags and
discarded prison uniforms. You had to pay if you wanted a clean mattress unstained and free
of the odor of its prior owner’s urine.

Often I have told my fellow inmates to stop rejoicing like small children at a Christmas party
each time they get a package of food, medicines or cosmetics from their families. I tell them
that the Bulgarian state should be providing us with much of what our families are buying and
we are buying from Bulgarian inmates. It is wrong and we should complain. If we don’t then
things will never change..

Yet none of my fellow inmates wants to long to reflect on this. They prefer instead to scoff
with arrogant indifference at the uneaten prison food that is regularly poured into the toilet or
thrown into trash. My fellow inmates prefer to ignore or forget the fact that his wife or his
mother and father had to go without something so they could pay for all this.

Some twisted philosophy or defect in reasoning causes them to believe that they are owed
something by their families when having placed themselves in this situation.

However, when alone and between them I can find real fear and anxiety beneath the façade of
their tranquil acceptance of what is an unacceptable situation.

When talking to them individually I can sense in each one the constant feeling of anguish that
accompanies each day. Everyone wishes he could do something to change things but does not
even bother to try because he knows that he can’t. It creates a daily feeling of dread for the
next day. Because it is fearful they prefer instead to rejoice in their ignorance and arrogance.

So they pay the bribes and accept their circumstances, never realizing that by participating in
this corruption they are themselves giving others a reason to keep this corrupt system in tact.
That nothing will change until a decision is taken by them to not accept corruption and abuse.
I have learned from this that their calmness in the face of this adversity comes not from being
brave or strong but from weakness. Their acceptance is in fact only resignation.

I once read that “the man who walks calmly to the scaffold does so not because he is brave
but because he is resigned to the fact that there is no helping it, no way out”.

That’s how you feel inside the SCP, the Bulgarian judicial system gives you no way out of the
suffering and inhumanity you are about to experience. You become reconciled to your
situation. Disbelief of wears off and then reality settles in.

Early on I learned that there is little point in complaining to prison officials and trying to
make your case. As a foreigner you have a far more difficult time of it since you can’t speak
their language and they can’t speak yours.

After a while you grow up and learn to give up, any chance for change lies with the people
outside of the prison who never see you and you never see them. To the SCP and Bulgarian
Correction Services officials you are nothing more than a statistic. That “One Canadian”
among 179 other foreign criminals who need to be punished. Nothing changes and no one
listens no matter how obsequious your lamentations or begging when you approach them for
help.

Such helplessness is one of the worst feelings I have ever experienced in my life. It causes a
person to think deeply and reflect on just how Bulgarian society, any society, can do this and
how European society can allow it to be done all the in name of justice. There is near total
inhumanity towards the inmates here who are still human beings and deserve to be treated as
such. It is a dreadful situation, one that causes young and old men to sleep at three pm in the
afternoon. Many have passed what now seems like endless year after year in the same room
only lying on their backs, on their stomachs, and with legs dangling over the edge all as they
smoke and drink tea. Each day the same.

I am 51 years old. My education and age mean nothing to the men and women who
administer the SCP. In 199 I started to repeatedly complain to Canada Foreign Affairs to help
me get the SCP administration to allow me to have access to universities in Canada so I could
continue my education through correspondence courses on the internet. The consular officer
from Canada Foreign Affairs and the SCP Warden laughed at me.

Failing that I then started to try to get work as a computer technical or start a computer class. I
figured I could service the prisons computers, but was told the job was reserved for
Bulgarians. It did not matter that I had more experience or education that Bulgaria inmate. So
I offered to start a computer class, I was told to buy the computers and then the SCP might
consider starting a class but only for Bulgarian inmates and not foreigners. This was true for
every non-labor intensive job in the prison.

Then I started ask the SCP Administration if it would allow me to be self-employed within the
prison. Again no, there was no way I could work for myself even if the regulations of the SCP
permitted.

In prison work and education are important for a number of reasons.

Work is important because two work days are counted as three days of your sentence. That
means you will be released significantly sooner, and it is the only source of income in prison.
Also time passes far more quickly when you are doing something else other than just sitting
around.

Education is important because this also can count towards your early release. Getting a
higher education means you can stay in touch with the world and prepare yourself for when
you are released. Also the year pass far more quickly and do not feel as though a complete
waste of your life.

I have never been given any opportunities for work or education in the 6 years I have been at
the SCP. The only success I had was to be the first inmate in a Bulgarian prison to be allowed
a computer. That took two years. From 1999 to 2001 I fought the Bulgarian correctional
system in court and with the help of Canada Foreign Affairs. I finally prevailed only after
suing the Bulgarian State in Canadian court and demanding that the computer was a necessary
facility to conduct civil prosecution of the Bulgarian State.

By 2002 other inmates were being allowed computers.

In October 2002 the SCP Warden was ordered by the Bulgarian Minister of Justice to take my
computer because he believed I had a connection on the internet. When they seized my
computer they had to seize all the computers. The other inmates, like me, threatened to sue the
SCP if we were not returned the computers. So in December 2002 they set up a cell as a
“computer center” where we could put and access our personal computers. I am writing you
today from that center, and not across the internet. But I still have no work and the SCP still
refuses to allow me or any foreign inmate to secure an education.

I have been at the SCP 6 years now, it is a long time. Most of the guards and I have developed
relationships of mutual respect. That’s because we see and deal with each other everyday.
Over time you can measure a man and weight his strengths and weaknesses. The problem is
not the guards, but their bosses. The men and women you rarely see and only hear about. To
them we, particularly the foreigners here, are little more than animals to be punished in the
name of the greater good for Bulgarian society.

It is clear that Bulgaria and Bulgarians are still waiting for the changes promised when
communism collapsed in 1989 and need the resources that freedom and democracy are
supposed to bring. Until then the Bulgaria State and the Bulgarian people continue to be at the
mercy of some incompetent or corrupt state officials who rely not on law but instead on the
remnants of and their contacts with men who belong to a brutal and corrupted communist
past.

This is particularly true for the Bulgarian criminal justice system and its correctional
institutions. The rules, practices and facilities are corrupted and inefficient leftovers from a
communist past, little has changed. It is by the thousand that the “unconnected poor” are
locked up in prisons so the government can “prove” it is fighting crime. Men and women are
still imprisoned solely for the political convenience and occasionally even for the profit of
corrupt prosecution and judicial officials.
Like the unfinished apartment blocks, Bulgarian courts and its prisons are unchanging
microcosms of Bulgaria’s modern past and the crimes committed against its people over the
last 50 years.

Things will change and that change can come about at any moment. But what remains unsure
is what the changes will be, how it will occur or when. Until then the humane cost will only
grow.

The ugly old concrete walls of the SCP are only surpassed in ugliness by the indifference of
Correction Service officials towards the human rights and dignity of the prisoners.

Apparently, Canada’s Foreign Affairs and their German counterparts believed and still
believes that the fall of communism in Bulgaria would see the leopard lose its spots. That the
Bulgarian judicial and prison system, and its officials, would suddenly embrace humanity and
compassion in place of nearly 50 years of brutal suppression.

Canada is and remains wrong. My family and I have paid and continue to pay the cost for the
ignorance of officials at Canada Foreign Affairs.

It is true that there are Bulgarian officials who want to see changes. Alone they are
helpless against those officials who are becoming rich thanks to the culture of corruption so
pervasive within Bulgaria’s police and judiciary. Canadian Foreign Affairs officials should
have actively been supporting those officials in Bulgaria who want to bring about change.
Canada Foreign Affairs could have helped these good men and women by believing my
family and me when pointing which Bulgarian official is breaching not only international law
when violating a Canadian citizen’s human rights but also Bulgarian national law when
knowingly mistreating a Canadian in one of Bulgaria’s prisons.

This has been and remains a lonely battle for one Canadian family and all I want is to come
home to Canada.

Michael Kapoustin