Unjustified police detention case taken to Strasbourg

Darryl Luke Borg, who was recently awarded just €150 in compensation by the Constitutional Court for his unjust detention at the hands of the police, as well as being ordered to bear legal costs, has taken his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

In 2013, Borg had spent three nights in police custody, charged with an armed robbery, before being informed that another person had admitted to the crime. He was subsequently granted bail, and the charges were eventually dropped.

In the application to the European court, lawyers David Camilleri and Joseph Gatt argued that Borg had not been compensated for being deprived of his liberty. The Maltese Constitutional Court had found a breach of his rights in the fact that the accusations were not dropped immediately after another individual admitted to the offence, but not for his arrest.

Borg had been denied bail following his arrest in connection with a convenience store hold-up in August 2013.  Two days after being arraigned and remanded in custody, his lawyers were informed by a journalist that another individual had admitted to the hold-up before a court. In spite of this clear evidence that Borg had no connection with the crime, he was only released on bail rather than having the charges against him withdrawn immediately.

The mistake had come to light when the police had arraigned 22 year-old Roderick Grech for the same hold-up as Borg. Grech had confessed to the police during interrogation, even handing over the balaclava used in the hold-up and was subsequently handed a suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty.

In its judgment, the Constitutional Court had concluded that the fact that Borg was only afforded a conditional release from arrest after the mistake became clear had breached of his right to liberty. Effectively, this meant that his rights were breached from the moment of his release on bail until the withdrawal of the charges three days later.

However, it also held that the CID officers’ decision to arrest Borg was not arbitrary and described the time between Grech’s arraignment and his sentencing to the day when the Attorney General’s office was consulted on the matter as “reasonable.”

But in their application to the European Court, Dr Camilleri and Dr Gatt are arguing that their client’s rights had been subject to an "unjustified deprivation of liberty due to an unlawful arrest without reasonable suspicion".

As there was no reasonable suspicion at the time of Borg’s arrest, the arrest itself was not justified, claim the lawyers, pointing to CCTV footage of the hold up which shows a man who is clearly of a different stature to Borg, as the culprit. Borg’s counsel posit that "at the point of arraignment the only evidence was an anonymous informant who could not be produced to give evidence, useless CCTV footage and a past criminal conduct sheet." This injustice, they said, was further compounded by the police’s failure to retract the charges when the error became clear, instead only requesting bail for a man who was wholly unconnected to the offence.

The miserly amount of compensation he was awarded, in addition to the order that he pay court expenses, as well as the arbitrary detention all constituted grave breaches of Borg’s rights, argued the lawyers, who also requesting “adequate non-pecuniary compensation that one may ameliorate the pain and suffering caused to the applicant in this case.”