Court decided custody was not illegal

I refer to the item Appeal Court Confirms Custody Was Illegal (August 12).

The information given on the court’s decision is totally wrong.

It is true that the court’s decision concerned a decision taken by the Court of Magistrates presided by Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera; practically all else is a complete distortion of what the “appeal court” decided.

To start with, it was not the Court of Criminal Appeal which gave the decision but the Criminal Court. The court did not decide that custody was illegal but it explicitly held that custody was not illegal, as my office contended.

While it did confirm that a magistrate had failed to follow procedure, which my office conceded, it concluded that this notwithstanding the person charged had not been remanded in custody illegally.

While the Criminal Court did agree that procedure had not been followed it did not uphold the decision of the Court of Magistrates. In fact, the Criminal Court allowed the application filed by my office and revoked the decision of the Court of Magistrates while reserving the right of the person charged to demand bail as submitted by my office. The Criminal Court did not itself decide on the issue of bail. This was decided by a different court, the Court of Magistrates as a court of criminal inquiry.

Editorial note: The error is regretted.