There are 9,571 pending cases in court, 1,318 of which have been postponed for sentencing. Most have been postponed for less than two years, the Justice Ministry said.

It said in a statement that at the beginning of the year, there were 43 cases that had been postponed for more than six years, in one instance for 12 years and in another for 11.

This, the ministry said, was unacceptable because it shed a bad light on the good work being carried out by members of the judiciary and the legal profession.

So, in agreement with the judiciary and the court administration an exercise was carried out so that with the help of court attorneys, introduced last October to help civil court judges in their research and preparation, all cases that had been deferred for sentences for more than six years would be decided.

The ministry said that 41 per cent of these 43 cases had already been decided since the beginning of the year, including a libel case instituted by Richard Cachia Caruana against it-Torca in 1998.