Omar Osman Omar was in prison for two and a half years longer than his sentence. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

Two Somali men convicted for violent indecent assault and unlawful arrest were yesterday awarded €5,000 as compensation for having been kept under preventive custody pending trial.

In a constitutional application against the Attorney General, Omar Osman Omar and Anwar Otman Hasan said that, in March 2007, they had been arraigned on charges of violent rape, violent indecent assault and unlawful arrest. They were found guilty of the last two charges by the Criminal Court in November 2012 but were acquitted of the rape charge and were sentenced to four years in jail.

They complained that they had been kept in preventive custody for the whole process except for Mr Omar, who had been released on bail for one month. That meant, they noted, that the time they had spent in preventive custody exceeded the prison sentence by two-and-a-half years.

The two men therefore asked the court to declare that their fundamental human right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time had been violated, pointing out that the hearing before the Criminal Court had lasted four years.

Mr Justice Silvio Meli, sitting in First Hall of the Civil Court, said that from the date of their arraignment to when judgment was delivered, the men had spent five-and-a-half years in preventive custody though they were eventually sentenced to serve four years in prison. There was therefore no doubt that they had spent two-and-a-half years more in prison than the prison sentence inflicted on them. (It is a practice that prisoners benefit from a remission of three months for every year they are sentenced to jail.)

The court pointed out that, according to the European Court of Human Rights, the reasonableness of the duration of proceedings was to be assessed in the light of the particular circumstances of the case. The court had to examine the complexity of the case, the applicants’ conduct and the conduct of the competent authorities.

Mr Justice Meli added that special diligence was required in cases where an accused person was held in preventive custody pending the trial. This was because an accused person could not be kept in prison indefinitely and the State was obliged to ensure that such a person could not be unnecessarily deprived of liberty.

In this case, the court concluded that the authorities had not exercised the special diligence required of them.

Mr Justice Meli concluded that the men’s right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time had been violated.