CCF files appeal against judgment ordering prisons to allow press access

The Director and the CEO of the Corradino Correctional Facility have appealed against a court judgement which ordered the prison authorities to allow journalist Manuel Delia access to the prison and other detention facilities.

Delia had filed constitutional proceedings in September 2020, after eight formal requests that he had filed, for access to the prison and detention centres to investigate and report on claims of illegal behaviour, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners and detainees, were refused. 

Mr. Justice Toni Abela had upheld the complaint in December 2023, remarking that the days of “je suis le roi, je suis la loi” [‘I am the king, I am the law’] were over. But court records show that the CCF’s Director and the CEO had filed an appeal shortly after that judgement was given.

In a blog post published yesterday, Delia reported that the press was still being denied access to the prisons, now on the grounds that an appeal had been filed. He described the action as “the behaviour of tyrants who want to hide their human rights abuses behind walls of secrecy.”