A Dutchman who has served 11 years in Corradino prison wrote a distressing letter to the Justice Minister promising to sue the government for his “horrendous” and “disgraceful” treatment.

“I am ill-treated every single day,” Perry Ignomar Toornstra, a convicted drug-trafficker wrote in his 11-page letter copied also to The Times, various international institutions, NGOs and news organisations.

Mr Toornstra, 35, made headlines in 2008 when he briefly broke out of prison but was caught and allegedly beaten up by prison guards, an incident which led to the arraignment of four prison guards and eventually to the resignation of prison director Sandro Gatt.

“Regularly, inmates are beaten up by the guards,” he claims, alleging he was beaten up by six guards who then tried to cover it up by locking him in a solitary cell despite having a broken arm and rib.

“I do not have to substantiate this claim because the above mentioned was proven by the court in a judgment on September 23, 2010,” he says, referring to the time when he was cleared of having resisted arrest and the courts contradicted the official version of what happened by establishing that the minor injuries the guards had sustained were not compatible with their version of events.

He said that while the case against four guards was still pending, three officers who he said witnessed the “abuse” and “torture” and “lied” to cover up their colleagues were still working in prison and “ill-treating” him every day. This claim rests on the court proceedings, which cleared Mr Toornstra of beating the officers, a charge levelled against him by the same warders who were later charged with beating him.

The Dutchman was imprisoned for importing ecstasy in 2000 when he was still 24 but claims prison did nothing to reform him. Instead, prison turned him into a “chain-smoking heroin addict who has developed a total understanding of how to commit, and even enjoy, heinous unthinkable crimes”.

He says he has been kept in Division Five, confined to a secluded cell with a wooden bench, staring and listening to the “dregs of society”, without any access to “work, education or sports”.

However, thanks to his Dutch family sending him writing paper and envelopes, he says he has managed to complete two diplomas by correspondence without any support from the prison authorities.

Demanding an explanation, he begins by claiming to have been “wrongly convicted by an incompetent court” led by a “corrupt” judge.

Mr Toornstra was originally sentenced to 20 years imprisonment but this was reduced to 15 years on appeal.

He was also slapped with a €60,000 fine, which, he said, constituted double jeopardy because he could never pay the fine and would, therefore, automatically have to spend an extra year in prison for the same crime. He said it was also discriminatory because those who could afford to pay were effectively buying their way out of a year in prison.

His case, he said, was based on a single statement by a witness who was found by the appeals court to have been “unreliable”.

He said the judge who presided over his trial and the Chief Justice who was appointed for his appeal – Patrick Vella and Noel Arrigo – were arrested and charged with corruption and illegal practices.

He also accuses the minister of doing “everything in (his) power” to impede his access to legal aid and the media and “blindly refusing an impending” transfer to his country.

“Well, what would one expect from a country where the Chief of Justice fell for a little €8,000 bribe!”

In his letter, Mr Toornstra also describes the 200-year-old prison building, where he says the walls are dripping with water in tremendously humid conditions and where extreme temperatures are exacerbated.

“Depriving a person of his liberty without providing any occupation... not for a day but for more than 11 years, is a grave form of mental abuse and torture,” he concludes, promising to take the case to higher institutions upon his release when he would have better access to the law.

The government said the allegations in the letter were still in the process of being examined and any reply would be addressed to the inmate “in due course” bearing in mind that the data protection law did not allow the divulgation of personal information to third parties.”