Malta cannot continue ignoring European Court judgment, argue lawyers

A man, currently serving time for drug-related offences, has filed a judicial protest demanding his immediate release because he had been convicted on the strength of a statement that he had released during his interrogation, without legal assistance.

The protest, filed this morning by lawyers Jason Azzopardi and Kris Busietta on behalf of 40-year-old Trevor Bonnici, comes only 13 days after a court ordered the Commissioner of Police and the Attorney General to pay €3,500 in compensation to a man charged with cocaine trafficking on the strength of a statement he had made without the assistance of a lawyer

That judgement had itself been delivered two days after a European Court of Fundamental Human Rights in which Malta was on the receiving end of harsh criticism for allowing this practice in the past.

The ECHR had held that there had been a “violation of Article 6 § 3 in conjunction with Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair trial and right to legal assistance of one’s own choosing) of the European Convention on Human Rights, when the accused in that case, Mario Borg, had not been assisted by a lawyer during his questioning, in the absence of any provisions of Maltese law allowing such assistance at the time.”

The ECHR had said this practice reflected “a wrong and worrying methodological perspective on the court’s role and the legal force of its judgements...The Constitutional Court of Malta chose to contradict the letter and the spirit of the Grand Chamber’s judgement, introducing a broadly formulated caveat to its applicability: the vulnerability of the defendant.”

Like Mario Borg, Bonnici had also been interrogated without a lawyer being present and had released his statement unaided. He had been convicted “purely and solely” on the basis of the admission in that statement, claim his lawyers.

The Maltese State is not only an accomplice, accuses the protest, but the perpetrator of the breach of the complainant's human rights.

“Every day of his continued detention is another day of illegal arrest by the Maltese State,” the protest reads. “Instead of the Maltese State protecting and enforcing the Rule of Law...we have a state that believes it is above the law and that thinks it can continue to live in a cocoon, insulated from its condemnation by the European Court.”