Degiorgio brothers claim rights breach over refusal of prison leave

Alfred and George Degiorgio, who are serving 40-year prison sentences after admitting to having carried out the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, are threatening to file court proceedings over a refusal to grant them prison leave.

Lawyers for the two brothers filed a judicial protest this morning, against the Director of the Correctional Services Agency and the Prison Leave Advisory Board, in which they claim their clients were suffering a breach of their fundamental rights, as the only two inmates who were being denied prison leave.

The refusal of prison leave is discriminatory and the defendant Director and Board did not want to give an explanation for this refusal, reads the judicial protest, which goes on to state that “therefore it is clear that the reason behind this refusal is being kept secret because it is unjust.”

They described as “truly ironic” the fact that that although a recent report on Corradino prison published by Principal Forensic Psychologist Kevin Sammut Henwood details the efforts by CCF management to bring inmates closer to their families, the decisions they were taking in Alfred Degiorgio’s case were diametrically opposed to it, preventing him from close contact with “the most important family member in his life.”

The fact that the brothers were being held in Division 5 also resulted in the denial of privileges normally granted to inmates, such as work and library access. This, the Degiorgios claim, constituted “inhuman and discriminatory treatment which find no justification, not in law and neither in morality.”

Lawyers Leslie Cuschieri and Noel Bianco signed the judicial protest.