'They washed their hands' of B.C. man's case. Don Martin, National Post.

Published: Tuesday, November 20, 2007

OTTAWA -It might not be death-row drudgery in Montana or the leg-ironed lifestyle of an Afghanistan incarceration, but a dozen years in a Bulgarian prison is a cruel life sentence, especially for a former Canadian millionaire jailed on a questionable conviction.

While the House of Commons erupts into daily howls of indignation at the plight of Taliban warriors or Ronald Smith's plea to live out his death sentence in Canada, Michael Kapoustin has been rotting away in a 100-year-old prison in Sofia, serving a 17-year sentence for defrauding his own company.

It's a jaw-dropping story of a B.C. businessman who was arrested and extradited from Germany in 1996 to spend the next six years enduring torture and solitary confinement before he was convicted of stealing his own money (which was never found).
There are even hints that the RCMP may have helped secure his conviction in a Bulgaria where fair trials and humane imprisonment were in serious doubt in the mid-1990s, which gives the story an obvious Maher Arar aura.

All this went down without Canada noticing, at least until this week when, as my colleague, Richard Foot, has discovered, the Conservatives will ramp up the pressure on Bulgaria to send Kapoustin home.

The respected and effective Council of Europe will force a mediation process on Thursday that could pressure Bulgaria into finally sending him back to a family he has seen only twice. Given the length of time he has served in prison for a relatively minor white-collar crime, it is expected he would immediately be freed.

Kapoustin's fall from high-flying capitalist to ruined man is a story so captivatingly bizarre that a Dallas sports columnist familiar with the family wrote a book on his plight.

Author Gene Wilson tells of Kapoustin's suffering in a cell shared with four other inmates where he was beaten, denied running water, fed tainted food and forced to endure horrific sanitation.

"It was an absolute horror story from start to finish. It's incredibly frustrating to me and everyone I talk to that Canadian officials have not been able to free him," Mr. Wilson says. "And yet Michael remains so upbeat and optimistic it amazes everyone."

Despite its horror, Kapoustin's story has never echoed in a Commons alive to the sound of politicians defending Afghan prisoners and convicted murderers. And if the Liberals don't raise a ruckus now, there's an obvious explanation.

It turns out they consistently rejected opportunities to pressure the Bulgarians on Kapoustin's behalf. The only time it was raised by an MP was in the late 1990s by then-Reform MP Bob Mills, who was shrugged off without an answer.

Toronto lawyer Dean Paroff, who took on the case for nothing because he was convinced an injustice had taken place, says the Liberals have shown "chronic ineptitude and indifference" to the plight of Canadians abroad.

"They washed their hands of this case at the worst possible time, and it inflicted a tremendous devastation on the family. It was an abdication of their responsibility."