Suspected Maltese hacker appeals extradition to the United States

Daniel Joe Meli has appealed against a court’s decision to order his extradition to the United States on spyware-related charges.

Meli, 27, from Zabbar had consented to being extradited, during his arraignment in February, but had later filed an appeal, arguing that the court had not taken into account his history of mental illness. When that appeal was dismissed, Meli’s lawyers filed constitutional proceedings, which were lost at first instance in July.

In his new appeal against the dismissal of his constitutional complaint, Meli argues that the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction had interpreted the case “only from the criminal limb of the right to a fair trial.”  as well as in its application of that right to extradition proceedings and when it ruled that Meli was not a victim at law.

In that judgement Madam Justice Doreen Clarke had ruled that fair trial safeguards only apply to extradition proceedings where the requesting country routinely and flagrantly breached that right and rejecting his claim to have suffered a breach of his fair trial rights, noting that he had even been allowed to file an appeal, despite him having agreed to his extradition.

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The application filed today by Meli’s lawyers Franco Debono, Arthur Azzopardi and David Chetcuti Dimech, argues that no attempt to verify whether he had been medically stable and capable of understanding the implication of the extradition he was consenting to “despite his long history of mental health problems and medical substance abuse.”

Psychiatric experts who gave evidence before the First Hall had testified that Meli suffered from crippling social anxiety and very low self-esteem, which meant that “he would quickly accept requests from others because he feels inferior, and feels that what the other person is saying has greater value than his own thoughts.”

Meli’s lawyer submitted that the court should have reached a different conclusion because extradition law gives subjects the personal right to access to a court which should determine whether all the prerequisites for extradition were satisfied and whether the subject’s consent was “informed consent.”

Fair trial safeguards should also apply to extradition proceedings because the proceedings would have been filed by the State itself, argued the lawyers.