Persons under interrogation by the Maltese police continue to be denied access to a lawyer, despite legal provisions passed through parliament six years ago, and the present government’s commitment to address Malta’s civil rights deficit when it came to power 21 years ago.
Labour justice spokesman Gavin Gulia this week berated the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry for having dragged its feet over the implementation of a legal amendment agreed upon by both parties in 2002.
Amendment 355AT(1) provides that “a person arrested and held in police custody at a police station or other authorised place of detention shall, if he so requests, be allowed as soon as practicable to consult privately with a lawyer or legal procurator, in person or by telephone, for a period not exceeding one hour.”
However, the amendment remains inoperative to this day: six years after it was approved by Parliament.
“This legal provision cannot come into force before the government publishes the relevant legal notice,” Gulia complained in a press statement earlier this week. “Many of the provisions of the Act are already in force, but government left this particular law to gather dust for six whole years.”
The government’s reluctance to transpose this legal amendment is strange, considering that the same Nationalist Party came to power in 1987 on the promise of “Work, Justice and Liberty”, after a 16-year Labour regime characterised by political violence and police intimidation.
Seven years earlier the country had been shocked by the mysterious death of Nardu Debono: a PN activist accused of planting a bomb outside former Police Commissioner Lawrence Pullicino’s home. Debono was discovered dead under a bridge in Wied Cawsli, Hal-Qormi, shortly after the police announced his “escape” from custody. Soon after the 1987 change of government, Pullicino was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, after it transpired that Debono had died as a result of severe injuries sustained while in police custody.
Fast-forward to 2008, and after two decades of Nationalist administrations, the situation facing persons in detention at the Floriana is virtually unchanged. Persons are still routinely denied access to a legal representative, despite recommendations to the contrary by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment in 1999. Nor are police interrogations recorded for posterity, as dictated by best practice.
And now, almost 30 years after Nardu Debono’s death, the police are once again in the spotlight on account of another mysterious fatality associated with detention procedures at the Floriana depot.
Nicholas Azzopardi died in Mater Dei hospital on April 22, shortly after claiming to have been severely beaten while in police custody, and thrown off a three-storey bastion. On their part the police maintain that Azzopardi had jumped off the wall in an attempt to escape, and claim to possess video footage showing the victim crossing the depot courtyard, unaccompanied, in the direction of the bastion.
Numerous discrepancies have since surfaced in the official version of events. For instance, the victim’s brother Reno Azzopardi claims he had first been informed that his brother had fallen out of a window, and not off a bastion as was later claimed. Subsequent police statements also suggest that a policeman had been injured while trying to rescue Azzopardi. However, no such incident was recorded in the official police report.
Access to a lawyer during the Nicholas Azzopardi interrogation, as well as a recording of the same, would surely have clarified a number of the anomalies and unanswered questions surrounding the 38-year-old’s mysterious death.
But until the legal amendments approved in 2002 are finally enforced, future interrogations at the Floriana HQ will continue to be shrouded in secrecy.

rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt