Daniel Muka did not suffer any breach to his fundamental rights by being denied bail

Alleged double murderer Daniel Muka did not suffer any breach to his fundamental rights by being denied bail, Malta’s highest court has confirmed.

In a judgement handed down on Monday, the Constitutional Court, presided over by Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti together with judges Anthony Ellul and Giannino Caruana Demajo, dismissed the Albanian’s appeal to his unsuccessful October 2023 constitutional challenge before the First Hall, also ordering him to bear the costs of the appeal.

Muka, from Albania, is indicted in connection with the homicides of Christian Pandolfino and Ivor Maciejowski, who were shot dead at their house in Locker Street, Sliema in August 2020.

At the time of his arrest over the Locker Street killings, Muka had already been on bail in connection with charges of the attempted murder of three police officers, whom he is thought to have opened fire upon during a jewellery heist.

Muka, together with two other men, stands accused of the murders of Pandolfino and Maciejowski and has been remanded in custody ever since his arrest. His bail requests have been consistently denied by the courts.

READ ALSO: Who is Daniel Muka, the man linked to the Sliema double murder?

He was reported to have attempted to escape from prison in 2020, the bid having been foiled by prison guards.

Muka’s lawyers had previously tried to argue that their client was suffering needlessly as a victim of failures by the Maltese State, which had not introduced an electronic tagging system for criminal suspects while on bail.

In today’s judgement, the Constitutional Court said that it recognised that although the risk of Muka absconding was the courts’ primary reason to refuse him bail, it was not the only one.  The judgement he was appealing from “was correct when it affirmed that electronic tagging was superfluous to any Court’s considerations on bail in this case, because no guarantee and/or condition imposed upon the applicant, including electronic tagging, had it been possible, was going to stop the applicant from absconding the Maltese Islands, an undertaking known to be very easy by sea. Neither does it see electronic tagging as a viable deterrent against the commission of further offences [by the appellant].”

It was not the Constitutional Court’s role to act as a court of appeal to the Criminal Court’s rejection of Muka’s appeal to the multiple refusals to grant bail to the appellant by the Court of Magistrates, said the judges, pointing out that the latter court had all the acts of the criminal proceedings at its disposal and was in a better position to assess his bail requests.

“This Court cannot fail to agree with the conclusions reached by the First Court. This is also being said in the light of the fact that the crimes allegedly committed by the appellant - that of theft and double homicide at the victims’ residence, took place while the applicant was on bail in connection of other criminal proceedings, where he allegedly robbed a jewellery shop.