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Karl Schembri
A Belgian prison inmate currently waiting to be extradited back to his country has been on a hunger strike for more than a week at the Corradino prison, MaltaToday confirmed. A Criminal Appeals Court judgement about his extradition is expected to be delivered tomorrow.
Serge Geryl, 40, has refused to eat food for the last 10 days according to a spokesman for the Home Affairs Ministry. He is protesting a Malta court decision to have him sent back to Belgium where he is to serve a 10-year jail term handed down four years ago for his involvement in a hold-up. Geryl claims he will be persecuted by a notorious gang leader whom he had exposed with the police for planning to blow up a post office, if he is sent back.
“Sending him back would be his death sentence,” said his wife, Kristine Vande Voorde, to MaltaToday.
Prison sources said the inmate, currently detained in Division 2, was visibly feeble although he was drinking fluids. The minister’s spokesman said he was stable.
“He is up and about,” the spokesman said, adding that the Belgian is seen daily by a medical officer.
Lawyer Jose Herrera, who is representing him in court, said: “He’s lost weight. He is just drinking water and tea.”
Belgian Ambassador Thomas Baekelandt and theCourt bans name of banker charged with fraud, now investments advisor Chairman of the Prison Board of Visitors have been informed of Geryl’s hunger strike.
Ambassador Baekelandt told MaltaToday that he met Geryl in prison and had confidential discussions with him.
On 26 October, Magistrate Joseph Apap Bologna ruled there were enough reasons for Geryl to be extradited to his native country, but the inmate claims his life would be threatened if he is sent to Belgium because he had passed on information to police investigators there that led to the imprisonment of the leader of a criminal circle.
Although Geryl was found guilty to being an accomplice in a hold-up in Belgium, he had not been jailed even after an appeals court decision confirmed his guilty sentence.
Geryl has been in Malta for the last five years working as a diving instructor, living with his Belgian wife and five-year-old son in Mellieha.
He was arrested last month on request from the Belgian prosecutors through a European arrest warrant.
“It was a bolt out of the blue,” Ms Vande Voorde said about the arrest, who last visited her husband Corradino yesterday afternoon. “He keeps saying that if he’s sent back to Belgium it would be his death. He told me he’d rather kill himself than go back. He has nothing against the Maltese prison but he can’t go back to Belgium.”
In court, Geryl’s lawyers produced a letter sent to them by the Bruges Police Commissioner which said that the Belgian’s detention in a prison back home would “surely put his life in dangers as the leader of the gang had verbally expressed his intention during a court hearing”.
Ambassador Baekelandt said he could not comment on Geryl’s claims or on the Belgian commissioner’s letter.
“It is not up to me as ambassador to give comments on the judicial process or about Geryl’s claims made in front of a law court,” Baekelandt said. “I don’t want to interfere in the deliberations of a Maltese judge.”
Ms Vande Voorde, also claimed in court that Geryl had been threatened by the criminal leader in the Belgium court by directing comments such as “dead man walking” at him. She said she was also personally threatened at home and had to relocate twice to protect herself and her child because Geryl had cooperated with the police.
“If it won’t be that guy, it will be someone else,” she said yesterday.
Magistrate Apap Bologna ruled there were no legal reasons to block the extradition. The appeals court will confirm or overturn the magistrate’s judgement tomorrow.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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