Daniel Holmes, the Welshman jailed for 10-and-a-half years for cultivating cannabis, has filed a judicial protest claiming the harsh sentence was discriminatory and arguing that his case was null on procedural grounds.

Mr Holmes’s new lawyers, Franco Debono and Michela Spiteri, filed the protest against the Attorney General and the Police Commissioner, holding them responsible for any damages he incurred.

The protest is the latest twist in the legal case of 35-year-old Mr Holmes who was 28 when he was arrested in June 2006 at his €300-per-month Gozo flat. He was caught growing cannabis plants, which, he always maintained, were for his personal use.

The lawyers quoted case law where, they noted, other men in very similar circumstances were jailed for a far shorter term.

A judgment given in 2005 stated that “there is discrimination when similar cases or people in similar circumstances are treated differently and there is no objective and reasonable basis for that different treatment”.

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