Drug dealer who bit prison officers upon being told of deportation is jailed

An incarcerated Nigerian drug dealer has been jailed for an additional two years, fined €5,000 and declared an illegal immigrant for attacking and biting prison warders after he was informed that he would be deported after serving his sentence.

Joseph Feilzaoo from Nigeria attacked and bit the Detention Service officers at the police headquarters in Floriana after he was told that he would be returned to Nigeria, having served ten years in prison for drug trafficking.

After receiving the bad news from the immigration office, Feilazoo argued that he still had two pending cases before the Constitutional court, before becoming irate and turning violent.

Police Inspector Priscilla Caruana Lee charged the man with violently resisting public officers in the execution of their duties, reviling or threatening the two correctional officers and slightly injuring one. He was also charged with disobeying a lawful order and breaching the peace.

He was found guilty all charges. All witnesses give an identical version of events, telling magistrate Joseph Mifsud that the accused was brought over to Inspector Darren Buhagiar’s office, where he was informed that he had to be deported to Nigeria since his Spanish residency card had expired and he could not return to Spain from where he had left.

As soon as the accused was informed that he was going to remain in detention until the deportation process was concluded and until any eventual appeal filed by the accused would be determined, the accused became “immensely aggressive,” noted the court.

The Correctional officers tried to handcuff him and escort him to the van and a scuffle ensued with the three of them falling onto the floor. 

From the description given by the officers present, it was clear that it was no easy feat to control the accused, noted the court.

“The accused not only disobeyed the orders given to him to get out of the Inspector’s office and board the detention van but he behaved aggressively so that the orders given would not be executed.”

Feilazoo had told the officers that “if you send me to Nigeria with escorts they will go to Nigeria but they will not come back to Malta,” which was taken to be a threat by the court.

The man had refused to be handcuffed. “His refusal was not simply verbal as he suggested in his cross-examination. It was also physical,” observed the magistrate.

Such was the ferocity of his resistance that pepper spray had to be used to subdue him after he punched one Correctional Officer in the eye and bit another officer’s hand.

But the court also criticised the Immigration Department for only starting to work on the man’s deportation procedures on April 1st 2018, a mere nine days before the accused’s release from prison, when the same department is aware of the bureaucratic process involved. 

Despite this shortcoming - with regards to which the court said it was not the competent forum to judge whether a breach of rights had occurred - the magistrate said the accused was not justified to act in the way he did, even more so when he was fully aware of how to seek redress bearing in mind that he already had other pending cases regarding alleged mistreatment in prison.

Finding Feilazoo guilty, the court handed the man a two-year prison sentence, together with a €5,000 fine. He was also ordered to provide a €2,000 guarantee that he would not attack the two prison officers. Moreover, the court declared Feilazoo to be an illegal immigrant and ordered the Principal Immigration Officer to provide for his immediate deportation after serving his sentence.

Lawyer Kevin Dingli, appearing for the accused, gave notice of appeal.