Malta’s drug laws under international scrutiny

As the police intensify their own 'war on drugs' with a series of tenuous arraignments on drug charges, the international spotlight has once again been cast on the case of Daniel Holmes: the 35-year-old Welsh national currently serving an 11-year sentence for cannabis possession.

Over the weekend three Welsh newspapers - including the country's largest national weekly, Wales on Sunday - ran in-depth stories on the ordeal experienced by Holmes over an offence that would elicit at most a minor reprimand in practically all other European jurisdictions.

Wales Online also interviewed Holmes over the telephone, for a story that would elicit several tweets and online comments about Malta's draconian legal regime - which, among other issues, fails to distinguish between different drugs on the basis of their harmfulness, or to distinguish between cultivation for personal use and drug trafficking.

Among the individual reactions was a letter sent to UK Prime Minister David Cameron by Daniel's father Mel, offering a word of friendly advice to the British PM who recently caused a media stir in his own country after admitting to having once smoked cannabis as a student.

"Don't go to Malta because you could be arrested for smoking weed," Mel Holmes told Cameron, citing the much-publicised case of a man who was recently arraigned for possession of cannabis - not because cannabis was found in his possession, but because he had admitted under interrogation to 'having once smoked the substance'.

But in comments to MaltaToday, Mel Holmes admitted to exasperation at the sheer extent of an ordeal which is entering its seventh year. "At the moment we are looking forward to the final appeal, which will be held on October 31," he said. "We are trying not to have any expectations. But we live in hope that humanity will prevail."

Mel Holmes reiterated that the prosecution never proved its thesis that his son Daniel was a career drug trafficker. "We hope that this complete lack of evidence will be taken into consideration by the judges. But at this stage we can only wait..."

The international press coverage also placed emphasis on this curious anomaly: "Far from being a drug baron, [Daniel Holmes] relied on his parents, retired teachers Mel and Kate, who live in Risca, Newport, for money to pay rent and bills," the Wales Online report observed.

The article also alluded to another UK citizen, Barry Charles Lee, who committed suicide in 2006 after spending six months in isolation in the notorious Division 6 (a punitive cell block which the Council of Europe has urged the Maltese government to shut down altogether following several onsite inspections).

Lee had been arrested together with Daniel Holmes over possession of cannabis plants retrieved from a flat in Gozo and weighing a total of 1kg - including their stalks and the soil in which they were planted.

Among the many issues raised by Holmes are the often astonishing discrepancies in Malta's erratic sentencing policy when faced with this sort of crime.

"It's been a total whitewash of a case," Daniel Holmes told Wales Online. "Even compared to a lot of sentences in here, it is unbelievable. One guy sentenced for 7kg of heroin got the same years as me... In the beginning, they put me down as a drug baron and cannabis factory owner, when realistically it was five plants and 25 baby plants.

"I obviously knew what I was doing was illegal in most countries, but most countries wouldn't have dealt with it with this much of a sentence."

Ostensibly, these and other discrepancies are among the issues currently up for discussion by the Justice Reform Commission, appointed specifically to address shortcomings in the legal system. Commission Chairperson Giovanni Bonello, a retired European Court judge, has already expressed his own personal disagreement with criminal prosecution of drug users.

But the Ministry for Home Affairs and Security and the Justice Ministry are sending out mixed messages on this issue: Junior Minister Owen Bonnici is on record stating that drug users should not be criminalised. Yet the police, who fall under Minister Manuel Mallia, appear to have stepped up their policy of zero tolerance to drug possession, in spite of Mallia's candid remark that: "Any changes to the present laws must only be done if this will result in fewer persons who use drugs, fewer persons who ruin their lives and fewer persons who die because of drugs. The fight against drugs is not won with the number of arraignments, but with these effective results."