Court throws out drug trafficker's human rights case

A Constitutional court has turned down a human rights claim filed by Joseph Feilazoo, a Nigerian man currently serving a 12-year prison sentence for drug trafficking.

Joseph Feilazoo, 38, from Nigeria had been arrested at the airport in August 2008 upon arriving on a ClickAir flight from Spain with 65 capsules containing 912 grammes of cocaine, 25 grammes of heroin and almost six grammes of cannabis, hidden in his stomach and rectum. Feilazoo had been convicted of drug trafficking by a jury in 2010, being jailed for 12 years and fined €50,000 for conspiring to import, importing and trafficking in the drugs.

24 additional months were later added to his jail sentence after he failed to pay the fine or the costs of the case.

The drug trafficker had some success with the courts in 2015, having filed a judicial protest, claiming that his belongings had been stolen from him upon his admission to prison, eventually being awarded €1,500 in compensation for this by the Small Claims Tribunal.

He was to have no such success in his Constitutional case, however. Five years after being jailed, the Nigerian had filed a case before the First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction, claiming that his right to a fair trial had been breached, by the fact that he had not been assisted by a lawyer during his interrogation and the manner in which the Attorney General had exercised his discretion on whether to indict him or remit his case to the Court of Magistrates for trial.

He had also argued that the fine imposed on him was impossibly large, given his impoverished state, citing the doctrine of impossibilia nemo tenetur – in essence, that no man can be forced to do that which is impossible. He claimed this breached his right to freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment.

But Mr. Justice Mark Chetcuti disagreed, holding that in order for a punishment or treatment associated with it to be "inhuman" or "degrading", the suffering or humiliation involved must go beyond that inevitable element of suffering or humiliation caused by legitimate punishment. Neither had the Nigerian shown that he had been treated less favourably than others in the same situation as him.

While finding that his right to legal assistance during interrogation had technically been breached, the court opined that this breach was merely formal and had no adverse affect on the rectitude of the criminal justice process. The applicant had only raised the issue after final judgement having failed to contest the validity of his statement at any stage, from arrest, through the compilation of evidence and up to the Criminal Court, even when he had been assisted by a lawyer.

On the question of the Attorney General's discretion, the court pointed out that it had been established by the Constitutional Court that “the law must be applied in practise not in the abstract. What the Court must investigate is whether or not the applicant could have foreseen that the gravity of his case was greater than that of the lower courts.” There was little doubt that he would have escaped appearing before the Criminal Court in this case.

The court dismissed his application, also ordering Feilazoo to pay 4/5ths of the costs of the case, the rest being at the expense of the AG.