Human Rights Watch call on Muscat to review detention laws in light of Strasbourg decisions

International NGO Human Rights Watch have penned an open letter to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, demanding a revision to Malta's detention system in the light of a decision by the European Court of Human Rights in the cases of Suso Musa and Aden Ahmed.

In the letter, HRW's executive directors for Europe and Central Asia, Zama Coursen-Neff and Hugh Williamson, said they recognised that Malta received a large proportion of migrants and asylum seekers entering the EU.

"Our report [Boat Ride to Detention: Adult and Child Migrants in Malta] endorses and calls for the expansion of the pilot EU relocation program and the need for greater EU assistance to Malta. It also repeats Human Rights imposes an unfair burden on EU states at its external borders."

But the HRW directors said that in Malta, detention is in practice "automatic and prolonged, without effective safeguards."

"In light of the findings of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the European Court of Human Rights, as well as our own research, Human Rights Watch recommends that Malta revise laws and policies pertaining to immigration detention, so that migrants are not detained simply because they have entered without permission, and allow for detention of asylum seekers only exceptionally. Malta should fully, effectively, and immediately comply with the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Suso Musa v. Malta, including by putting into place reforms giving migrants access to a remedy whereby they can effectively challenge their detention."

In the case of Ibrahim Suso Musa, the Sierra Leonean asylum seeker complained that his detention had been unlawful and that he had not had an effective means to have the lawfulness of his detention reviewed. He was awarded €24,000 in damages over the unlawful conditions of detention of asylum seekers, European Court says.

"We understand that the position of the previous government was that the Louled Massoud case was limited to its own facts. But in the Suso Musa ruling the European Court of Human Rights makes clear that there is a need for Malta to undertake general measures in relation to inadequate remedies to challenge the lawfulness of immigration detention. The judgment of the Court also recommends general measures in relation to improving conditions of detention (at issue in the Aden Ahmed case) and limiting duration of immigration detention," the HRW directors said.

The Massoud case found that the Maltese legal system did not provide for a procedure to challenge the arbitrary extension of detention to 18 months, when an asylum seeker is refused protection on appeal. The ECHR ruled that this extension was illegal because there as no realistic prospect that any deportation takes place within those six months.

"We strongly recommend that Malta end the unnecessary detention of unaccompanied migrant children, by amending legislation to prohibit the immigration detention of migrant children (pending age determination) for the sole reason that they arrived irregularly. Malta should provisionally treat all those with reasonable claims to be under 18 as children until age determination is completed," Human Righst Watch said.

"In the interim period while detention continues, we recommend that Malta use separate detention facilities for those with pending age determination requests so that they are not detained with unrelated adults, and change the legal framework of migrant detention so that children detained pending age determination may effectively challenge their detention without waiting for the conclusion of the age determination process."