The days of “je suis le roi, je suis la loi” are over

Judge Toni Abela delivered a clear ruling this week in which he found Manuel Delia’s rights had been breached when he was denied free access to prison in 2020.

Delia had sought permission at the time to visit prison then run by Alex Dalli. The context of the visit was to investigate and report what was going on behind the walls of the Corradino Correctional Facility amid growing concerns on Dalli’s unorthodox disciplinary measures.

Several suicides had been recorded over the two-year stretch Dalli served at the facility before he was forced to step down.

Delia had been granted access but this was limited to the prison kitchen. This left him none the wiser as to the situation on the ground inside the prison.

In his judgment, Abela declared that the “law cannot be used to create a barrier between journalists and the public,” upholding the claim made by Delia that his fundamental rights were breached when he was denied free access to prison and detention centres.

In a clear rebuke to Dalli’s warped prison regime, the judge said the days of “je suis le roi, je suis la loi” [‘I am the king, I am the law’] are over.

The judgment is significant because it stipulates the right of journalists to access prison and detention facilities subject to the privacy of inmates and residents being protected.

How a prison is administered and what happens within its walls is something of public interest, especially when several suicides are reported. It is the public’s right to know that spurns the work of journalists.

Journalism is not a mere act of individual curiosity but an act in the public interest, which also includes places where, for security reasons, scrutiny is difficult to come by.

The court’s judgment underscores this very basic and important premise.

This leader cannot agree more with the conclusions of Judge Abela and calls on the authorities to have clear policies on prison visits by journalists that uphold first and foremost the right to freedom of expression while offering due protection to inmates from intrusion into their private lives.

But this judgment is also significant because it comes on the back of string of libel cases, which Dalli lost against MaltaToday and its sister newspaper Illum. The Abela ruling was yet another reprimand of the Dalli system that was built on fear and draconian disciplinary methods.

The Home Affairs Minister, who had defended the former prison chief and his methods before the pressure and the body of facts grew too big to ignore, should have a modicum of respect and acknowledge that the government was wrong to shield Dalli all that time.

One court ruling after another has shot down Dalli’s behaviour and methods. All this may be in the past now but it should serve as an eye-opener to policy makers - when faced with repeated stories of abuse in public institutions, their first reaction should be to investigate those claims rather than dismiss them.

Furthermore, with such a string of negative judgments against Dalli, the government should re-assess whether it should continue keeping the former army man on its books as Malta’s envoy in Libya to act as liaison on migration issues.

Can Dalli be trusted in such a delicate role, given his draconian methods in prison?

This leader believes not.

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The amendments being proposed by the government to limit freezing orders in criminal cases to the amount that was defrauded or laundered, are responding to rulings and comments made recently by the Constitutional Court and Criminal Court. The courts have questioned the necessity of maintaining freezing orders over all of the property of the persons accused of the relevant crimes.

The amendments also seek to make it easier for persons who are accused – and per consequence not yet guilty - to maintain their financial commitments such as paying loans, school fees and insurances despite having their funds frozen. They also give creditors, who would otherwise be negatively impacted by a freezing order on third parties, more rights.

The logic behind these amendments is that freezing orders should be proportionate to the crime being alleged. The changes also put greater onus on the prosecution to be more thorough when charging suspects with financial crimes.

However, it is also a fact that in financial crime and other activities that generate tonnes of cash that would have to be cleaned through legitimate operations, the lines between legitimacy and criminality are very blurred. The whole scope of money laundering is to create a legitimate façade that enables the individual to benefit from the criminal activity in a socially and legally acceptable way.

The government knows this, so much so that Justice Minister Jonathan Attard made it a point to stress that freezing orders imposed by the courts in drug trafficking cases will be excluded from the new provisions.

Among other changes to the proposed Bill, the Opposition is requesting that a similar exemption be made for corruption cases.

Under Maltese law, corruption by public officials is not a time-barred offence. This was an amendment made by the Labour government shortly after it came to power in 2013.

So, under existing legislation, corruption by public officials is already treated in a special way.

This leader sees no reason why the exemption afforded to drug trafficking cases should not be extended also to corruption cases like the Opposition is suggesting. After all, corruption causes significant moral and material damage to society.