I am indebted to the invaluable CourtServe Headline Express (my wake-up reading every working day) for referring me to a piece in the Sofia Echo in which the judge who helped find Michael Shields guilty of attempted murder attempts to defend her position.

That seems distateful enough. But what I found deeply disturbing is to read that the Prosecutor-General's office is the only authority that can decide whether a case can be re-opened in Bulgaria.

No criminal cases review commission in Bulgaria, then? Pity.