French ambassador to Bulgaria Etienne de Poncins has welcomed the decision to hold what he calls "two parallel procedures" in the case against those accused of murdering law student Martin Borilski in Paris in 2000.

The Borilski case will now be returned to the French courts. There will now be two separate procedures, in a Bulgarian and a French court, presided over by two different judges. The ambassador said that should contrasting decisions be reached by the respective courts, it would make for what he described as "an interesting legal case". 

On May 18 2009, the Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) returned the case of the murder of 24-year-old Bulgarian law student Martin Borilski to the Veliko Turnovo Court of Appeals and overruled the acquittals of Georgi Zhelyazkov and Stoyan Stoichkov, who were accused of his murder.

Borilski was discovered dead in his Paris flat on July 20 2000. He had been stabbed more than 90 times and his skull smashed with a dumbbell. Two years later, both Zhelyazkov and Stoichkov were tried for Borilski's murder.
 
But in the first case, all evidence gathered by French investigators, including parts of Zhelyazkov's skin and blood under his nails, was more or less dismissed by the defence as failing to comply with the Bulgarian penal procedure code.

The French ambassador told the Sofia Echo that previous decisions in the case had mystified him.
"I published a press release at the time of the original acquittals in Veliko Turnovo. I did indeed find the first decision difficult to understand. Many concrete proofs were uncovered by the French police. It was not just me because the Supreme Cassation court apparently also thought it was bizarre," he said.