Magistrate Carol Peralta yesterday hit out at court delays and called the situation “disgraceful” as he took to the Bench for his first sitting in a Maltese court in eight years.

Dr Peralta is back in Malta permanently after serving as an international judge presiding over war crime trials involving some of the worst atrocities in Kosovo.

As he started coming to grips with the caseload that had been passed on to him, the magistrate was also faced with a couple of cases that had to be put off because people did not turn up.

In one of them, two prosecuting officers and the defence lawyer were absent.

Accustomed to the system of deferral that plagues Maltese courts, the court registrar reacted by asking the magistrate when he would like the case postponed to but Dr Peralta would have none of it. He instructed the registrar to demand an immediate explanation from the prosecution.

“We are here to work and not to put cases off,” he insisted, describing the situation as “intolerable” and “disgraceful”.

Looking at the file of the case in question, he said it was not the first time the prosecuting officers – police inspectors – had been disrespectful to the court by failing to inform the presiding magistrate they would not be able to be present for the sitting.

Such behaviour caused unnecessary delays and hindered the delivery of justice within a reasonable time, he said.

The issue he touched upon is a sore point, which different court administrations have struggled with for decades.

Dr Peralta was appointed magistrate in 1990. In 2003, he was assigned to the UN Interim Mission in Kosovo.

He was also appointed Presiding Judge of the Special Chamber of the Supreme Court of Kosovo, dealing with privatisation matters.

Ten months later he was elevated to Chief International Judge of Kosovo with overall responsibility for managing the international justice programme in the country.