Upholding a Shoumen District Court verdict passed in March 2008, the Veliko Turnovo Court of Appeals pronounced the two men accused of murdering a Bulgarian student in Paris not guilty, which prompted French ambassador to Bulgaria Etienne de Poncins to display his indignation in an official statement sent on January 22 2009.

In the court case that has been carrying on, on and off, for almost five years, Bulgarian authorities, with the co-operation of French police, have been trying to solve the murder of the 24-year-old law student Martin Borilski. Since his murder in 2000, French investigation efforts have provided evidence incriminating Georgi Zhelyazkov and Stoyan Stoichkov, acquaintances of Borilski, Bulgarian daily Dnevnik reported on January 23.

Back in 2000, after failing to answer text messages and phone calls for several days, friends of Borilski's signalled the French authorities and he was discovered dead in his flat in Paris on July 20. He had been stabbed more than 90 times and his skull was smashed with a dumbbell.

Two years later, both Zhelyazkov and Stoichkov were prosecuted for the alleged murder of Borilski. All evidence gathered by the French investigation, including bits of Zhelyazkov's skin and blood under the victim's nails, was more or less disregarded by the defence as not in compliance with the Bulgarian penal procedure code. Zhelyazkov and Borilski had been high school classmates in Varna, and stayed in touch when the former arrived in 1999 to study in Paris.

French investigation worked on two possible reasons for the Borilski's murder. One was that he had been pressed by the two to enter a circle for making and distributing of false credit cards and passports, which Borilski refused to do and threatened to signal the French police. The second was that Borilski was killed for money.

Since the victim and the defendants were all from Varna, the case had to be tried first at the district level and then at the court of appeals in Varna. Instead, the case was transferred to the Shoumen district court.

According to initial information, prosecutors and judges in Varna officially withdrew from the case. Media reports have speculated that the reason for this was the fact that Zhelyazkov's father, Borislav Zhelyazkov, was a former deputy head of the prosecutor's office in Varna. Now, Borislav Zhelyazkov is one of the most influential attorneys in the city.

Dnevnik daily reported that the case was transferred to Shoumen and that the trial began only after, in 2003, Nicolas Sarkozy, the then-French interior minister, posed the question about the progress of the case before his Bulgarian counterpart at the time, Georgi Petkanov. In 2008, during her visit to Bulgaria, French justice minister Rachida Dati discussed the case with her Bulgarian counterpart, Miglena Tacheva, the French embassy said on January 22.

After the acquittal was announced on January 21 2009, ambassador De Poncins expressed in the statement his indignation and confusion regarding the court's decision. His statement also said that the verdict came nine years after the crime had been committed, while, during that time, the alleged killers were walking free.

"At a time when the Bulgarian Government is demonstrating its will for deep reforms within the judicial system, yet another acquittal for a criminal act shows, unfortunately, the continuous difficulties that Bulgarian judicial institutions are experiencing when the crime calls for a just sentence," De Poncins said.

Veliko Turnovo's verdict can be appealed before the Supreme Prosecutor's Office of Cassation.