Accused in drugs case challenges unpaid bail bond provision

A man found guilty of breaching bail has filed a constitutional application claiming that a section of the law, through which an unpaid Lm10,000 bail bond was converted into 2,000 days in jail, was anti-constitutional.

Lawrence Gatt filed the application in the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional Jurisdiction against the Prime Minister and the Attorney General.

Mr Gatt, who stands charged with conspiring to deal in drugs, had been granted bail on a series of conditions that included a curfew and a personal guarantee of Lm10,000.

He explained that after he was caught outdoors in breach of the curfew, his bail was revoked and a court ordered that the personal guarantee would be forfeited in favour of the government.

Mr Gatt informed the court he could not afford the Lm10,000 and, in a ruling handed down on July 28, 2006, the Criminal Court ordered that the fine, or the bail bond, be converted into 2,000 days in prison according to article 586 of the Criminal Code. This article lays down that "any person who is arrested for non-payment of the sum in which he bound himself, shall be detained for a period not exceeding one day for every five liri of that sum".

In the application, Mr Gatt argued that the July 2006 ruling and article 586 were in breach of his fundamental human rights to protection from inhuman treatment and to the prohibition of torture as laid down in the Constitution of Malta and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. He referred to article 11 of the Criminal Code that states that, if a person failed to pay a fine within a prescribed period of time, that fine is to be converted into one day in jail for each Lm5. This article adds that if the fine is not higher than Lm10,000 the jail term should not exceed one year imprisonment.

Therefore, he argued that, unlike article 11, article 586 of the same Criminal Code did not fix a maximum jail term if one failed to pay a fine.

He thus pleaded that article 586 provided a jail term that was excessive and disproportionate to the offence committed, that is, breach of bail.

He called on the court to declare that the July 2006 ruling and article 586 were in breach of his human rights.

Lawyers José Herrera and Michael Camilleri signed the application.