Prisoner Abner Aquilina is back at Corradino prison, in spite of a court decree ordering that he should be held at Mount Carmel Hospital.

His defence lawyer Mario Mifsud claimed in court on Wednesday that Aquilina was sent back to prison because he was treated inhumanely while being detained at the state-run mental hospital.

Mifsud was speaking at the continuation of the case, in which Aquilina is pleading not guilty to murdering the 29-year-old Polish student Paulina Dembska in January 2022.

Mifsud claimed that while at the hospital, Aquilina was kept locked in a room for 23 hours a day.

Aquilina, who is now being held at Division 5 at Corradino Correctional Facility, was sent to the Mount Carmel Forensic Unit following his arrest and ordered to be held at Mount Carmel Hospital (not the hospital's high-security forensic unit) following a court decree.

The decree, issued on September 1, had annulled a ministerial decision shifting the psychiatric care of inmates to the forensic unit.

It came just as the nurses' union ordered its members who work at Mount Carmel Hospital to abandon the ward they were in if Aquilina was moved there.

"Today is the first opportunity that the defence may inform the court that Abner was being kept locked up in a room for 23 hours, being allowed out only for one hour to phone," Mifsud said.

He argued that it was "the first time in Malta's history" that a union decided how a patient at the mental hospital was to be treated, rendering a magistrate’s decision ineffective.

The defence condemned the abusive manner whereby Mount Carmel authorities had handled the matter, but thanked the head of psychiatry at Mount Carmel Anton Grech who had offered “great help and support".