Daniel Holmes, the Briton jailed for 10 years for cultivating cannabis, has filed a Constitutional application calling for the annulment of his sentence on the basis of discrimination and procedural errors.

He also asked the Constitutional Court to declare that his rights were breached because he was not given a fair trial.

His new lawyers, Franco Debono and Michela Spiteri, filed the Constitutional Case  against the Attorney General, the Police Commissioner and the Registrar of Courts asking for effective remedies including the quashing of the jail term.

They listed several grievances, including lack of legal assistance during arrest; the unfettered discretion of the Attorney General in deciding whether to send the accused to be tried by a jury or by the Magistrates' Court; discriminatory treatment; lack of distinction between cultivation for personal use and cultivation to traffic the drug; procedural irregularities which rendered the bill of indictment null and void and the undue duration of proceedings where the Attorney General asked the court twice to start the compilation of evidence afresh.

The constitutional case 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 four judgements where, they noted how, even in more serious cases, the accused were sent to much shorter terms and they were judges by summary proceedings in the Magistrates' court instead of by a jury as was done in the case of Mr Holmes.