It's been a living hell, says freed Liverpool fan Michael Shields

Jack Straw pardons supporter jailed for attempted murder following 2005 Champions League final

(PA)

Travellers have been journeying to Varna on the Black Sea coast since the time of Theophanes the Confessor. For Michael Shields, an 18-year-old Briton on his first trip overseas, Bulgaria's summer capital was meant to afford a convenient gateway to the East to see the football, rather than the riches of Byzantium.

Yesterday Mr Shields, now 22, emerged from a nightmare that began in the alien surroundings of the Balkans in 2005. After one of the most dogged campaigns in recent legal history – one that has seen his family engaged in a titanic struggle with the British and Bulgarian legal systems – the Liverpool football fan was celebrating a free pardon from Justice Secretary Jack Straw. It had taken four years for the authorities to accept that Mr Shields was innocent of the attempted murder of a barman in Varna as he and fellow fans basked in the afterglow of their side's epic Champions League Final victory in Istanbul.

Since his conviction and sentence to 15 years in jail, tens of thousands of people have signed petitions demanding his release; celebrities, bishops and politicians united to protest his innocence. The Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard backed his campaign. But it was only after corroborative new evidence from Mr Shields's family that the convicted racist Graham Sankey had confessed to the crime that the Justice Secretary made his recommendation to the Queen that the young football fan at last be freed.

As he was met by his parents, Marie and Michael, at the gates of Thorn Cross Young Offender Institution in Warrington, where he was transferred three years ago from a Bulgarian prison, Mr Shields described his relief – but also his anger and bitterness at being convicted of a crime he did not commit.

"The last four years have been the hardest four years of my life. They have been a living hell," he said, in a statement read on his behalf by the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones. "Today is a happy day for me but one of mixed emotions too. I am a free man, yes, but it should not have come to this. I now face a hard battle to adjust to normality. To find a job. To resume friendships. To build an ordinary life."

Mr Shields paid tribute to his parents, friends and supporters, including the MP Louise Ellman, who campaigned tirelessly for his release using parliamentary privilege to name the other suspects in the case, including Mr Sankey, who is also from Liverpool.

Mr Shields said: "I knew I would never walk alone." He extended his sympathy to Martin Georgiev, the innocent victim of the unprovoked assault in which a paving slab was dropped on the semi-conscious barman's head. "He and his family, like me and mine, have been denied justice for four long years," he said.

Outlining the reasons for his decision, Mr Straw said he had "agonised" over the case but had been delighted when the "new" evidence of the confession came to light. He had telephoned Mrs Shields to deliver the news personally, he said. "This is an extraordinary story," said Mr Straw. "If it was in a television drama people would think this was something the scriptwriter had added, and that it was slightly incredible. You couldn't make it up. But this is what happened."

The Justice Secretary knew Mr Sankey had confessed to the attack on the second day of Mr Shields's trial in Bulgaria in 2005. But the court had refused to accept the confession as evidence. Mr Sankey's solicitor later claimed his client had been referring to a different fight and the confession was withdrawn. But the Shields family had visited Mr Sankey at his Liverpool home where he admitted committing the crime. The 22-year-old electrician was jailed for five months in 2008 for racially abusing a Liverpool doorman.

On 29 May 2005, five days after Liverpool's European triumph, the contingent of fans was back in Varna, partying all night at the Bonkers bar and sleeping by day. On that penultimate evening of his trip, his suitcase already packed, Mr Shields had gone to bed earlier than other fans and was spotted by the porter at the Hotel Kristal returning to his room at 2am. Crucially he had been wearing a cream T-shirt. At 5am trouble flared between a group of Britons and some local men. Mr Georgiev stepped in to stop the trouble but was punched to the ground by a man witnesses said was dressed in a white T-shirt. As he lay on the floor the rock was dropped on his head, fracturing his skull.

Police arrested three men, including Mr Sankey, the following morning. Officers took Mr Shields away to a local police station where he was chained to a radiator for 16 hours in sight of witnesses. He was asked to don a white T-shirt and take part in an identity parade with a group of three dark-skinned Bulgarian men all of whom were wearing jumpers. That identification was to form the basis of his conviction for attempted murder.

"I fell apart," recalled his mother, Maria. "I was in pieces. What do you do when you know your baby is scared and afraid and you can't do anything to help them? He might be 6ft 1, but he wouldn't harm a fly, and you'll not find anyone to say otherwise, not one."

In April 2006 the Supreme Court in Sofia reduced her son's sentence from 15 to 10 years but refused to grant a retrial. In November that year the teenager arrived back in the UK after a charity benefit concert in Liverpool had raised the £90,000 to pay his outstanding fines in Bulgaria, paving the way for transfer to a UK jail. But despite the protestations of the family and their supporters Mr Straw refused to grant his release – insisting he did not have the powers to do so. This position was only overturned after lawyers for the Shields family took the case to the Court of Appeal. But in July the Justice Secretary once again declined to recommend a pardon.

Yesterday Mr Shields's father, Michael Snr, urged the British Government to bring pressure to bear on the Bulgarians to re-open the case: "They know who the real culprit is and he should be made to stand in court and face a trail for what he did."