Mifsud Bonnici distanced himself from poor quality of detention officers

The inquiry into the death of 32-year-old Mamadou Kamara flagged not only the disturbing conditions asylum seekers were forced to live in, but also established that detention services officers were indeed “the worst of the worst”.

Lieutenant Colonel Brian Gatt – former head of the detention services – told inquiring judge Geoffrey Valenzia that the army used to send its rejects: officers facing criminal charges, with usury problems and who preyed on vulnerable migrant women during the night.

Whenever he required personnel, the request would have to go through both government and ministry channels for “the necessary filtration” – to a central agency, the Office of the Prime Minister and also the Finance Ministry. It was finally the ministry that decided the number of officers to be deployed for Detention Services according to the “exigencies” of the ministry, the army and the police force.

The management of detention centres fell directly under the responsibility of the ministry for home affairs, not the Armed Forces.

But in the Valenzia inquiry, former home affairs minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici distanced himself from the poor quality of detention services officers.

“There are no first and second class soldiers. Having joined the army, all soldiers remain soldiers. Any soldiers which the army deems as inadequate should be removed. But it is the AFM’s problem whether it’s keeping good soldiers or not,” he is quoted as saying.

“Are we accepting people in the army or the police who, when they lose it, they kill people?”

He claimed that the excessive force shown by officers had nothing to do with training: “Why should I train someone in the army or the police force not to kill anyone? Do you require any special training to stop you from hitting someone? You don’t need special training.”

Arguing that it hadn’t been the first time that migrants had escaped from detention centres only to be recaptured, Mifsud Bonnici said one should not be under the impression that all officers were bad people.

“The cardinal point is how officers react when they are attacked. This is not the first case of aggression they had. How they react depends on them […] But it is not the system’s fault. Is it the system’s fault that I hit someone because he attacked me? Is it the system’s fault? The detention system’s fault?”

Human rights NGOs, including aditus and the UNHCR. Both representatives spoke of the tension that existed in the detention centres between the immigrants and the staff.

“It is the system that creates problems. I think what happened a few weeks ago is the result of a number of problems and accumulation of years and years of stress on the system which collapsed,” Neil Falzon, of aditus, told Valenzia.

Fr Alfred Vella, of the Church Emigrants’ Commission, compared closed detention services to a cylinder gas being pressed and which could “explode at any minute”.

Jesuit Refugee Service director Katrine Camilleri told Valenzia that, from the officers’ point of view, they used to feel powerless because they didn’t have the adequate means to respond.

“[…]You put me in a position to do a task which is quite impossible. For example, I am expected to guard a facility and stop people escaping from a place which is not secure and someone escapes and you punish me. Then obviously if somebody escapes it becomes a very personal issue. He escaped in my shift and I’ll get into trouble… Here you have people who have a multi function….

“They are not just guards. They are guards plus, plus, plus and plus. So that fact, that the roles are not clear and the boundaries are blurred and they have no procedures, makes their jobs infinitely more difficult. This leads to a situation where there is a lot of arbitrariness. If there are no clear rules I would react to things how I think. I will respond to what my head tells me, not necessarily the best way.”

Downloadable Files

Mamadou Kamara Inquiry Report.pdf