Stripped of all dignity

Last Sunday we woke up to the news that two Sliema local councillors had been arrested. Their crime? Apparently using council laptops for their personal business and keeping the laptops from their one true home, the local council, for some time.

The mere hint that the laptops were not being homed in their cosy local council office cots was enough to charge the boys in blue into action.

Plainclothes policemen were dispatched to nab the alleged offenders following a local council meeting. There were arrests – over charges of the misappropriation of a laptop.

But the over-the-top treatment did not stop there. Labour councillor Martin Debono was ordered to strip naked before being questioned. This was before being questioned and made to stay the night in an ice cold cell.

Now, this doesn’t seem to have caused much of a ripple with the authorities or government ministers or propagandists who seem to be more intent on justifying the increase in MPs’ salaries than anything else, but I find it absolutely shocking.

Does the offence of misappropriation of a laptop warrant the Midnight Express treatment? Why should an investigation into what is essentially a white-collar offence merit a strip search? Does stripping a suspect bare produce quicker results?

Or are the investigative techniques of the police so crude that they require the humiliation and degradation of a suspect to be successful?

The police have kept mum about these claims, and there has been no official statement in this regard. An unofficial police source, however, has said that a search is standard procedure for anyone held in custody.

This source added that although it is not standard for someone to be asked to strip naked, custodial officers would want to check that the person held does not have any object with which he could cause himself harm. That doesn’t do much to clarify things, does it?

While it is clear that people in detention cannot be permitted to be in possession of weapons or dangerous implements, I wonder what self-harming objects the police thought they would find on Debono’s underwear, which could not be detected with a less humiliating procedure.

As for it being a standard procedure, I’m rather sceptical. Consider the following these cases:

Last September Charles Saliba, the 55-year-old Nationalist mayor of Żebbuġ in Gozo, was hauled before the Gozo court and charged with misappropriating the council’s laptop computer and of embezzling public funds.

From what I could make of newspaper reports about his arraignment, the forces of the law came down hard upon the hapless Saliba because he had taken the laptop home and allowed his daughter to access her Facebook account from the same laptop.

The mayor was prosecuted but there is no report of him being arrested and being forced to strip – and remember that this was on a laptop charge as well.

Then there was the time when Fabio Psaila was arrested. Psaila is – to put it mildly – a more colourful person than either Saliba or Debono.

He was arrested for questioning as a suspect in the botched raid on the HSBC Bank centre in Qormi. It seems Psaila was not subjected to a strip search by the police.

However, when he allegedly realised that he was wearing the same clothes which may have been captured by the bank security cameras, he tore them off with his teeth and flushed the shreds down the cell toilet.

So there you are: The police seem to be overly concerned with stripping someone who is suspected of misusing a laptop, but not cautious enough to prevent someone accused of a far more serious crime from turning potential evidence into linguine and flushing it into oblivion.

I can’t help thinking that the police come over all heavy in certain cases and not in others.

Unnecessary heavy-handedness will do nothing to restore the public’s faith in the police force.

The enforced nakedness of people detained in custody has been challenged by human rights associations in other countries.

As the court in Ghana declared, “There are laws in this country and elsewhere that oblige soldiers to treat prisoners with dignity and respect, even in war.” The same principle – of treating detainees with a modicum of respect – should apply across the board.

And finally, although all types of offences should be investigated with the requisite amount of care, perhaps some priority-setting would be in order.

I mean, here we have the police pursuing those who allegedly misappropriate laptops with the full vigour of the law, while citizens live in fear of hold-ups and depend on Batman from Żebbuġ to save them.

We could do with fewer shock and awe tactics in the laptop misappropriation department, and some more effort on the violent crimes front.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt