After Constitutional breach confirmed, wrongly convicted man requests bail

A man whose conviction and five-year prison term for drug trafficking was declared in breach of his right to a fair hearing yesterday, has requested bail.

Last April, Christopher Bartolo, 36 from Fontana, Gozo had been handed a five-year prison sentence, together with a €15,000 fine by the Criminal Court after he admitted to having trafficked 1.5kg of cannabis.

Bartolo had unsuccessfully filed a request for bail last August but it was turned down by the court.

This morning, Bartolo's lawyers Franco Debono and Amadeus Cachia have filed another bail application, after the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional Jurisdiction yesterday declared that the man’s fundamental right to a fair trial had been breached when he was denied access to a lawyer during police interrogation.

That court had expressed concern at the fact that there were no records as to whether the police had given Bartolo, who is a kidney transplant patient, food and drink before interrogating him as he returned from a 6-hour dialysis session in hospital. Bartolo is on dialysis after losing his transplanted kidney, a fact which he attributes to the prison authorities' failure to provide proper medical care.

At the time of his arrest, Bartolo had been exhausted, hungry and nauseous, the court noted, but he had been questioned by 6 police officers, who also searched his home and took him into custody after discovering 167g of cannabis resin at his home.

During a second interrogation, the man had cracked under ‘direct and persistent questioning’ and had admitted to drug trafficking.

In her judgment yesterday, the court, presided by Madam Justice Jacqueline Padovani Grima, observed that Bartolo had only been allowed to consult a lawyer before the first interrogation and that no lawyer was actually present during either interrogation.

This practice was legal at the time, but pronouncements by the European Court of Human Rights led to a number of successful cases attacking convictions secured in this way before the Maltese Courts.

As the law currently stands, persons under arrest have the right to not only consult a lawyer before interrogation but to also be accompanied by a lawyer during the interrogation itself.

Judge Padovani Grima had ruled that the effective remedy in this case would be to expunge his statements from the records of the case, together with any police testimony that makes reference to it. Bartolo was also granted the possibility of withdrawing or confirming his admission before the Criminal Court.

Lawyers Franco Debono and Amadeus Cachia are legal counsel to Bartolo.