A medical certificate by the Corradino Correctional Facility showed that Jason Decelis suffered bruising to the arms and scratches on his back.

A prison inmate is claiming a guard had to be restrained by a team of specially trained officers when he started beating him for refusing to use a hole in his cell floor as a toilet.

The medical certificate of Jason Decelis, seen by Times of Malta, highlights bruises he claims to have sustained during the altercation on Tuesday morning.

The incident prompted the Home Affairs Ministry to order an inquiry that is expected to be finalised later this week.

“I was told to use this hole, but I went to the bathroom. Then he grabbed me by the back of my jacket and pulled it off.

“I was topless and he dragged me to the ground and held me down. He started punching me on my arms and shouting at me for several minutes,” Mr Decelis said, describing the officer as “a giant”.

Mr Decelis, 37, said he was still shocked that all this had happened just because he wanted to use the toilet and could not understand why the officer had hurled profanities for wanting to do something perfectly normal.

He was punching me on my arms and shouting for several minutes

“Why should I have to ask to use a toilet, shouldn’t this be something I can just do? I don’t want to use a disgusting hole in the ground; that’s for animals. After several hours of holding back, I just had to go,” he said.

A ministry spokeswoman said no action had been taken against the guard yet, as prison authorities were waiting for the results of the inquiry before taking a position.

Meanwhile, however, Mr Decelis has been moved from his single room in the prison’s general population section to a high-security division.

Asked if this was for Mr Decelis’s own safety, George Busuttil, who heads the prisoner support group Mid-Dlam Għad-Dawl, had his doubts. He said most prisoners were moved there as a form of punishment as there were no televisions and limited social interaction.

Jason Azzopardi, the lawyer of Mr Decelis, who has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, said he was waiting for the results of the inquiry but had no doubt his client’s allegations were true after having spoken to him late yesterday afternoon.

“I asked him about this quite thoroughly and his reply was ‘why would I lie? I have nothing to gain and everything to lose’,” Dr Azzopardi said.

The medical certificate drafted by the prison’s medical officer shows that Mr Decelis suffered scratches along his back and bruises to his arms. He also had marks on both his wrists, but the medical officer commented that these were slight.

Why would I lie? I have nothing to gain and everything to lose

This, however, may not have been an isolated incident. Mr Decelis’s father said this was the third beating his son had endured in less than a year.

He claimed his son was assaulted as recently as August when a prison gang surrounded him and tried to force drugs on him.

In another altercation earlier last year, he was assaulted by another guard, his father claimed.

Mr Decelis was jailed for murder by omission of 18-year-old Rachel Bowdler. He and his mother had dumped Ms Bowdler’s dead body in a field in Mġarr after she overdosed on heroin with Mr Decelis.