Daniel Holmes is serving time on cannabis convictions. Photo: Mark Zammit CordinaDaniel Holmes is serving time on cannabis convictions. Photo: Mark Zammit Cordina

Welshman Daniel Holmes’s human rights were not violated when he was kept in preventive custody on theft charges, a Constitutional Court has ruled.

Mr Holmes, who is serving time for cultivating cannabis, filed a constitutional application against the Attorney General, the Police Commissioner and the Registrar of the Gozo Courts.

Mr Holmes said that, in December 2007, he, together with Berry Charles Lee, was charged with stealing a car, a dinghy engine, causing wilful damage and slightly injuring a man.

He said he was held in preventive custody for almost a year, until bail was granted in December 2008. He was eventually acquitted of all theft charges against him in May 2013.

He claimed that his right to assistance when under arrest had been violated, that he had not been provided with an adequate defence by his legal aid counsel and that he had not been granted bail within a reasonable time.

However, his claims were dismissed by Mr Justice Mark Chetcuti sitting in the First Hall of the Civil Court.

Referring to Mr Holmes’s claim that he had not been provided legal assistance when arrested, Mr Justice Chetcuti said Maltese case law provided that this did not amount to violation of human rights. One had to assess all the circumstances of a case to see whether lack of legal assistance breached one’s right to a fair hearing.

In this case, the fact that Mr Holmes did not have legal counsel when under arrest did not prejudice his defence, Mr Justice Chetcuti concluded. Mr Holmes had not released a statement to the police and had always insisted he was innocent.

The court also dismissed the claim that Mr Holmes had not been given adequate means to choose his own lawyer. He had raised this point in other constitutional proceedings and it had been found to be unfounded.

Mr Holmes had not made such a complaint during the criminal proceedings and there was no evidence that the legal aid lawyer was inexperienced or incompetent in criminal law.

Mr Justice Chetcuti also threw out Mr Holmes’s claim that he had been held in preventive custody for too long. He had been arraigned on December 12, 2007 and was granted bail on December 4, 2008.

Bail had been denied on his arraignment on the grounds that there was a danger he would abscond and it was only on October 21, 2008, that he again asked for bail, a request that was upheld on December 4 of the same year.

The six-week period between the request for bail and his release could not be considered to have violated Mr Holmes’s human rights, the court said.

Mr Holmes is in the process of filing a case against Malta in the European Court of Human Rights over the drug possession case, attacking not only the lengthy proceedings but also what he believes is an excessive punishment.

In November 2011, he was jailed for 10 and a half years and fined €23,000, the judgment being confirmed on appeal in 2013.

He recently had a €7,000 compensation award revoked after a Constitutional Court found that his rights were not breached by trial delays.

Mr Holmes had been arrested in Gozo in June 2006 and charged with importation, cultivation, possession and sale of cannabis.

The police seized over a kilo of cannabis and 0.24 grams of cannabis resin with a total value of €11,694. The total weight of the cannabis included roots and stalks that are not consumable.

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