Three Ethiopian men who are to be deported after spending much of their adult lives in Malta have lost a court battle to put their removal on hold while they battle the decision in court.

A court ruled that the trio always knew that they were in Malta on borrowed time, that they had no extraordinary ties to Malta and that their claims about facing persecution if returned to Ethiopia had already been examined and dismissed by a separate tribunal.

The three - Abdi Sufian Mahmud, Kendieneg Mehretie Mersie and Yosuf Ahmed Adam – were among a group of five Ethiopians who filed a request for an interim measure to effectively freeze authorities’ work to deport them.

Two of the five subsequently dropped their claims and opted to return to Ethiopia. The remaining three continued that court battle.

The three arrived in Malta by boat between 2007 and 2014. All three applied separately for asylum, saying they faced prosecution by Ethiopia’s government if made to return home. All three had those applications rejected after the Refugee Commissioner (now the International Protection Agency) concluded that they had failed to provide evidence to substantiate their allegations.

Despite being denied protection, all three continued to live in Malta for several years as the government had no repatriation agreements in place with Ethiopia. All found jobs, learned Maltese and English, made friends and established lives here.

In August of this year, authorities issued detention orders for all three, saying they were subject to deportation orders and were to be held in detention pending repatriation to Ethiopia.

They began court action to revoke those orders and asked the court to freeze their deportations until that case was concluded. The Attorney General appealed that request.

On Friday, a court presided by Judge Henri Mizzi ruled that there was no legal basis to order such an interim measure.

While it was commendable that three had established lives in Malta and never run into any trouble with the law, that in itself was not enough to conclude that they had stronger ties to Malta than to their home country. All three still had family in Ethiopia, the court noted. Furthermore, all three were subject to deportation orders for years and therefore did not qualify as ‘settled migrants’ as defined by European Court of Human Rights caselaw, the court added.

The only factor which could potentially justify an interim measure, the court ruled, was their claims about facing persecution and forced to enrol in Ethiopia’s army if returned home. But those considerations were dismissed when they first applied for asylum and none of the three had filed any fresh applications for asylum in recent months, the court said.

It therefore dismissed the applicants’ request for an interim measure, saying they had failed to establish that their rights were breached by authorities’ actions.