Convicted cocaine user claims human rights breach

Daniel Gatt was 18 when he was caught with a gram of cocaine at a music event in 2008 and released a statement without the assistance of a lawyer

A man who was sentenced to imprisonment for drug possession and trafficking after being arrested in possession of 1g of cocaine has claimed that his human rights had been breached because he was not assisted by a lawyer during questioning.

On the night of the 28 June 2008 during Creamfields Festival, a dance music event, police Drugs Squad officers had arrested Letizia and Louise Sultana in the car park, just as they were about to consume cocaine.

Letizia Sultana had told police that she had been given the drug by her boyfriend, Daniel Gatt, who was summoned to the area using the girl’s mobile phone and eventually arrested.

Questioned by the police, Gatt had explained that he had gone to the party with his friends and was looking for his girlfriend. He had received a call from her on his mobile phone, directing him to an area where he was subsequently arrested.

As the right to legal assistance during interrogation had not yet been introduced, Gatt – then 18 and with no previous experience of police questioning - had released a statement without speaking to a lawyer, in which he admitted to having purchased a gram of cocaine for €70 with the intention of consuming it with his girlfriend.

Gatt was charged with trafficking and possession of cocaine and subsequently found guilty, being sentenced to six months' imprisonment and fined €750. Gatt’s appeal from this sentence is still pending.

Gatt’s legal team, lawyers Franco Debono, Marion Camilleri, Amadeus Cachia and Angie Muscat, have filed an application to the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional Jurisdiction, arguing that Gatt qualified as  a “vulnerable person” in the eyes of the law, not least on account of his age.

They point out that the case before the court of magistrates was based on two statements, released by the appellant and his girlfriend, both of which had been made without the benefit of legal representation and without access to the suspect’s police file. This, reads the application, constitutes a breach of his fundamental right to a fair hearing, as laid out in both the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Gatt’s lawyers are arguing that a person’s right to legal assistance during investigation is “one established by copious and constant jurisprudence of the European Court of Fundamental Human Rights.”

Previous judgments, argue the lawyers, have established that the breach is committed the moment that access to legal assistance is refused, independently of the accused’s circumstances, character, previous convictions and vulnerability or lack thereof.

Additionally, say the lawyers, the statement released by Gatt’s girlfriend, which had also been taken without legal assistance, had been used against Gatt.

The right, of a person accused, to legal assistance during police interrogation is a relatively new concept, originally tabled in the House of Representatives in 2011 – coincidentally by Dr. Debono.

In order to remedy to the situation, Gatt is requesting the court consider granting him a retrial or reopening the proceedings against him.