Thane,

I sincerely admire how you journalists can write stuff and only have to review it once
or twice for errors. Every time I read this handle I find a stupid mistake like a typo or
misused word. Very frustrating! So please accept my apology for sending this again. It
may not matter to you but I have a conscience that requires me to at least try to get it
right. Again, what I corrected is marked in red. So thankfully you do not need to read
the whole thing.

LIFE
IN 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 libelouslibellous 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.

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It could not end there,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 reevaluatingre-evaluating Bulgarian compliance with the
terms of my 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 a 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, foreign or Bulgarian, 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 by a prison doctor as he had been the previous month.
Once before by a prison doctor. The , in August, the Bulgarian police had come top to
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.

19218259.doc Page 2 of 30
This timeOn that bright September morning the German prosecutor gave orders that
German police remove me from the prison hospital by force. The German Prosecutor
was not going to be embarrassed twice by either a prison 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 This Order resulted in two uniformed German police
arrived policemen arriving at the hospital and orderedordering hospital staff to remove
my IV. I was then told to stand, despite my protestations that I was weak and would
undoubtedly lose consciousness.

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. and fell to the floor. I can remember
falling for what seems likenot seconds but instead long minutes of the a slow motion
world spinning around me as the ceiling fell away and the hospital floor approached. It
was with

With a thump that I hit the floor. It sounded and only then actually passed out. I can
even remember the sound, very much like a rather large sack of potatoes. Before I
completely lost consciousness I hearddid hear the words “Slavic pig” and “bastard
Jew” uttered by these two German policemen. It was said with a lot of great deal of
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 . On the
advice of my father I was not to tell anyone that my grandparents and father were Jews.

Very unceremoniously theyThe police then ordered two convicts to grab one leg each
and another two convicts to grab an arm each and carry me. I was then very
unceremoniously carried unconscious out of the hospital to the waiting police car. I,
not even an ambulance.

Sometime later I regained consciousness in the backseat of 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 to
German authorities the same way he had the Bulgarian prosecutor 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.During that drive I confronted them with who I was and what I
am. Their whole attitude changed when I explained that I was a Canadian, had never

19218259.doc Page 3 of 30
been a Bulgarian and that by definition Jews are not “Slavs”. At first they did not
believe me, but I made them open a sealed envelope with the some of my personal
belongings. For the first time they saw my Canadian passport. They said they had been
told to pick up a Bulgarian citizen, not a Canadian. I got neither an explanation nor an
apology about their remarks as I was losing consciousness and being bodily carried
without the aid of a stretcher, much like a corpse, to the waiting police car. There was
only a deft silence. However, they did suddenly then become concerned about my
health mostly my unhealthy appearance. So they radioed ahead for a stretcher and
doctor to be waiting for me at Frankfurt airport.

The doctor examined me and reported that I would not die and so could travel. So I was
loaded onto the waiting Bulgarian Balkan Airlines plane. Two medical staff, with the
aid of a wheel chair, brought me to the plane and carried me up to the Bulgarian police
who were waiting for me. A German newspaper and photographer captured my
departure on film and reported it the next day.

The whole rear of the Balkan airlines flight, some 100 seats, was left intentionally
empty. There 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 armoredarmoured vehicles, 4 or 5 police jeeps with their lights flashing
and 50 masked policemen from aan interior police Special Forces swat team. Each was
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 guardsmen, one in the room and one
outside my door. They were rotated every 2 hours.

I stilled continue refusing food. So the next day Bulgarian 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”.

19218259.doc Page 4 of 30
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, obtain a bible or other books first required that I take the pills they
gavethe doctors insisted on giving me. Eventually I stopped losing weight, and was
removed the minute Bulgarian doctors could report they had stabilized my health. I
learned later the pill and intravenous solution contained steroids to put weight on.

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”.

PrisonersWhile in a remand centre 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.
19218259.doc Page 5 of 30
My experiences there are so surrealistic as to seem more like nightmares rather than
real experiences. ForEvery night for the last 8 years those nightmares have greeted me
when I try to my sleep and always end by only ended with my waking me every the
next morning. After, even so many years I still find it hard to cope with them at 5:30
am, but. But I have to and still have to. cope. So like clockwork I wake up every day at
5:30 am. So I start each day by trying not think about these last years and focusing only
the future.

Thankfully these bad 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 inmore than
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. In an uncomprehending
stupor as you wonder at what is happening to you. There is a. You become
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
fantomsphantoms, shadows that could speak. thereTheir 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 it is easier to let the dark
clouds of unconsciousness to consume you and pretend you are only going. I pretended
nothing happened, it was only a waking nightmare, so I would just try to go back to
sleep. The and the next morning you willwould again wonder if it was only some kind
of a bad dream. But the pain and the bruises proveproved otherwise. You goneSo I
would go on with yourmy day alone and with your only the demons left behindto keep
me company.

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.

19218259.doc Page 6 of 30
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 mounthmouth 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”. EnventuallyEventually I
figured figure it out 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 the lawyer could 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 lawyerU.S. lawyers 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.

19218259.doc Page 7 of 30
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 acceptaccepted 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 beginbegan to
rejoice in my isolation. The concept of death isbecame 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 becamebegan peeling off layer after layer of my
mortality until finally discovereddiscovering that we are all immortal. When I reflect on
thatmy time in solitary I am amazed, first because I lived it and through it and second at

19218259.doc Page 8 of 30
how much truth I is uncovered and wascan be revealed when you are in thephysical and
mental 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 defensedefence, 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, so
their criminal trials have to 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
19218259.doc Page 9 of 30
“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 choosenhave chosen 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
muckmuch.

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 . I remember how the blood had draineddraining
from his face that his had given him the appearance was the of a stone face of a faced
man having. The kind of look you might expect from someone who had just seen the
face of the Gorgon Medusa. His breathing was shallow and irregular.

Once hewe 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.

19218259.doc Page 10 of 30
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 systmensystem is still a problem although not as
pervasive today as before at the lower level as beforeadministrative levels of the prison.

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

19218259.doc Page 11 of 30
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 “1st
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 find himself. Only a
Canadian or other non-Bulgarian is placed in a maximum security facility
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

19218259.doc Page 12 of 30
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 acessaccess 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 torepeats “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 Clubsbilly clubs around
you was how they let you know they do not tolerate any back talk, foolishness or
violations of their rules.

19218259.doc Page 13 of 30
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 bBilly Cclub 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.

19218259.doc Page 14 of 30
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 Clubsbilly 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 the 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 hasgets a single red 5 gallon plastic bucket as a toilet to be 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
are 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.

19218259.doc Page 15 of 30
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 Canada’s 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 1 st
Prisoners Ward. It was later explained to me that the SCP Warden considered me a

19218259.doc Page 16 of 30
“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 1 st 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; 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 Violent offenders are
mixed with first time offenders who are also mixed with repeat offenders. This is done

19218259.doc Page 17 of 30
as a means of control, the prison using fear to create informers within the cell blocks.
This is also true even among the foreign inmates. Those inmates who have short
sentencedshorter sentences and expect to be paroled are used to spy on the 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
2003 he had been setup to take a fall for gambling and carrying money, both serious
offensesoffences 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 E.U. 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.

19218259.doc Page 18 of 30
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 a crime also connected with taking
money, the story made all the local papers.

I am not sure the if then 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”,” or is the
“moral” thing to do or because it is a “duty” a Bulgarian official has taken an oath to
observe.

No, things only 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 Jankulov”, 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
AffarsAffairs 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.

19218259.doc Page 19 of 30
Brides and fees was also the only way an inmate could get or use aan illegal 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 gotgot a 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 divided into two
separate groups.
19218259.doc Page 20 of 30
The largest group by far isnumbers of inmates at the TurkishSCP are citizens of Turkey,
and then comes the Albanianscitizens of Albania 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 crosscrossed the border into Bulgaria from
Turkey.

The seeming good behaviorbehaviour 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,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 and
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.

19218259.doc Page 21 of 30
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 a moment alone. You never have
one momentthe opportunity to yourself where you couldcan say to yourself “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’sCanadian S.C.P.A. facilities are treated
better than we are. I know they have regular and free medical care.

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 again that one “red plastic bucket” wethat each inmate
has to share and no toilet. There are toilets or sinksinks in the cells.

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 lunchLunch 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.

19218259.doc Page 22 of 30
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 fiberfibre 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 comecomes mostly from the vegetable oil that
saturates everything that the prison kitchen here preapres.prepares. 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 throughthrow out the
water and wash the beans first. You are liable to have cramps or worse if you don’t. The
Like I wrote earlier 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 Bulgarian friends here who can occasional covisit me and
bring me some home cooked food.

19218259.doc Page 23 of 30
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 theyvisitors are required to sit on broken old wooden stools or theatre
benches removed from the prison auditorium. The seats are placed in front two separate
ceiling high rusting wire mesh fences separated. This separates the inmate from the
visitor by a space of about a meter and a half. There is an old telephone in front of the
visitor and one in front of you.. These But, these rarely work very well so most
peoplemostly we are all are simply screaming across the space that divides us. To
image the quality of these visits you have to put into in an empty room 15 men, the
inmates, at one end and about 30-40 men, women and children, the visitors, at the other
end and let them. yell at each other and over each others voices for 30 minutes.

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 of imported cigarettes and even some items of
food of brought for inmates but never reaching them. Often food is thrown away
because a guard decides you are not allowed this or that. For years we all fought to be
allowed to cook our own food. But the guards would refuse to give us any food that had
to be cooked. It took a lot of complaints from foreign embassies to remove such
restrictions.

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.

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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, septicemiassepticaemias 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 torequesting 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
The Bulgarian sections of the prison have been are being constantly renovated with
toilets and showers in the cells., the cells of the inmates have not been touched in the
last 6 years or more.

The Ministry of Justice always answers that there is no money to improve the
conditions of non-Bulgarian inmates. The prosecutors’ office once wrote a Russian
inmate that “there is no money, besides a foreign inmate lives a better quality of life
than his Bulgarian counterpart”. Foreign prison inmates will be the last to see any
changesimprovements made at the expense of the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice.

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.

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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 odorodour 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 intact. Most of my fellow inmates fail to realize that
nothing will change until a decision is taken by them to not accept the official
corruption and or abuse. at the hands of incompetent and cruel men. That our families
and we should all be complaining to our governments and embassies. Changes are slow
in coming because there are only a few of us ready to complain, and nothing will
happen until Bulgaria’s elected officials know we are and require to be treated with a
little humanity and dignity. Until then we simply do not exist.

What I have learned from this that their watching the calmness and silent acceptance of
the other inmates is this. That their being calm and silent in the face of this adversity
comesdoes come not from being brave or strong but from weakness. Their acceptance
Acceptance is in fact only resignation. Unlike solitary confinement there is at the SCP a
chance to change things, and it is wrong to not try.

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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 . 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 At first there is disbelief that nothing can be
done. In time that wears off and then reality settles in.; you accept nothing can be done
and so give up.

Early on I learneddid learn 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 at the SCP. The only 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. ThatThe “One Canadian” among 179 other foreign criminals who need
to be punished. Nothing changes and no one listens at the SCP 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 all day in the same room and only lying on their backs, or on
their stomachs, and withtheir legs dangling over the edge all of their beds as they
smoke and or drink tea. Each day everyday is the same. year after year.

I am 51 years old. My education and age mean nothing to the men and women who
administer the SCP. In 1991999 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 than the
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-laborlabour intensive job in the prison.

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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 years pass far more quickly and you do not feel as
though a complete waste ofyou completely wasted 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 but only after suingI sued the Bulgarian State in a Canadian court and
demandingU.S. court. I insisted that the computer was a necessary facility to
conductmy conducting civil prosecutionprosecutions of the Bulgarian State in Canada
and the United States.

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

19218259.doc Page 28 of 30
supposed to bring. if those changes are to become realities. Until then the Bulgaria
State and the Bulgarian people continue to be at the mercy of some incompetent or and
corrupt Bulgaria state officials who rely not on the 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 itthey 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. AloneBut,
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 out 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 American and one Canadian family
and all Iwe want is to come home to Canada.

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Michael Kapoustin

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