Campaign to clear Michael Shields will continue - MP

Sep 26 2007 by Alan Weston, Liverpool Daily Post

JAILED Liverpool football fan Michael Shields will be freed on May 30, 2010 – five years after his imprisonment for the attempted murder of a barman in Bulgaria.

Michael Shields, 21, from Edge Hill, has always protested his innocence over the attack in May 2005.

Shields’s sentence was reduced to 10 years on appeal, and he was moved to the UK prison system in 2006. His time served in Bulgaria will now be counted as part of his sentence.

Michael Shields’s parents said they they were told the news a couple of days ago, but were waiting for it to be confirmed.

Campaigners are planning to visit Bulgaria next month to present new evidence to the authorities, which they say backs up Shields’s claims that he is innocent.

Shields was moved to Garth adult prison in Preston on his 21st birthday last week. He was originally transferred from a Bulgarian jail to Hindley Young Offenders’ Prison near Wigan in November after a £90,000 fine was paid.

The provisional release date, conditional on good behaviour, was set by law and order minister David Hanson after a legal wrangle.

The Home Office had earlier said that time spent in prison in Bulgaria would not be counted as part of his sentence, but it has now accepted that it should count towards his time served.

Riverside MP Louise Ellman, who has been acting on behalf of the Shields family, said she was continuing to campaign for a pardon.

Shields was jailed for the attempted murder of barman Martin Georgiev in May 2005.

His lawyers appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds his rights were violated during the trial, but the appeal was rejected.

He been holidaying in Bulgaria after travelling from neighbouring Turkey, where he had watched Liverpool beat AC Milan in the Champions’ League final on TV.

Shields told the court he was asleep at the time of the incident.