The young prisoner who died in his cell last week feared prison violence, according to his grieving family. 

Ihtisham Ihtisham, 25, from Pakistan, loved football and would call his mother back home once a week as he counted the days to his scheduled Christmas morning release date. However, with just four weeks to go, he died overnight in his cell at Corradino Correctional Facility on November 19. 

An autopsy concluded that he had suffered from a previously undiagnosed heart condition.

The sudden death of the young inmate, one of around a dozen over the past two years, has raised questions about the state of Malta’s prison and the level of care afforded to those doing time.   

Ihtisham’s brother, Khan, told Times of Malta that he had spoken to his younger brother on the phone the day before he died.

“We would speak to us very week. He was my brother and I miss him,” Khan said as he left the morgue where he formally identified his brother’s body for the first time earlier this week.  

Khan said that, in their last conversation the day before his death, Ihtisham had told him about a violent brawl that broke out between two other inmates. 

Khan said his brother was frightened by the regular outbursts of violence and that life in Malta’s Victorian era prison was weighing down on him. 

“This time, the fight was between a guy from Libya and an Egyptian, it was bad and a guard beat one of them badly. My brother was scared of this stuff, he would tell me,” Khan said.   

A spokesman for the Correctional Services Agency said there were “no records of any fight between prisoners occurring on the indicated date”.

The deceased also told his brother how he was comforting another inmate, from Bangladesh, who was struggling to cope with the reality of life behind bars. 

He told me this other guy would cry a lot. My brother was a good guy,you know

“He told me that this other guy would cry a lot and was not doing well. My brother was a good guy, you know. He used to tell him to be strong and that it is going to be ok, that this time will pass,” Khan said. 

Ihtisham, a sensitive soul according to his brother, couldn’t wait to get out of prison and move on with his life.

He lived a healthy lifestyle, would exercise, play sports and would certainly not have used drugs.

“We did not know about this condition they say he had and my brother was a healthy guy. He was in the custody of the Maltese government and they should have taken care of him,” Khan said. 

Just as the circumstances around Ihtisham’s death were initially veiled in mystery, the events leading to his incarceration read like a modern-day workforce tragedy.  

Khan said his brother had travelled to Malta from Pakistan last year in search of a job and a chance at bettering his life. 

After finally securing decent employment with a local distributor in February, he was among the first to be let go just a few weeks later when the COVID-19 pandemic landed in Malta in March.

Although his employer had promised to help him get his paperwork in order, once he was sacked Ihtisham was on his own.

Khan said his brother feared getting picked up by the authorities and being put into a detention centre, particularly the Safi migrant facility, which Khan said his brother had been told was rife with abuse and run by “violent gangsters”. 

“My brother did not want any trouble, he did not want to be with gangsters. He was not that kind of person at all,” Khan said. 

So, in the hope of getting a better job, Ihtisham – likely acting on some bad advice from friends – signed up for a fraudulent asylum document from a website.

Khan said his brother had planned to use the document to get into Italy and try his luck at finding a job there. 

Ihtisham, however, was stopped at the airport and arrested. Once charged, Khan said his brother pleaded guilty to holding forged documents and was handed a six-month prison sentence. 

“He knew what he had done was wrong, he did not want to hide from that, he just wanted to get out of prison and get on with his life,” Khan said.

‘Majority of deaths’ from natural causes

On Thursday Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri fended off criticism about the number of deaths that occurred in prison over the past couple of years, saying that the absolute majority of them were due to natural causes. 

“I have asked for copies of the magisterial inquiries into all the deaths and I can say that the absolute majority of them – around 75 per cent – were due to natural causes,” he said.

“One has to keep in mind that the prison population doubled in the last few years and is now equal to that of a town or village. I do not know of any town or village where deaths do not happen,” he said, when asked by Times of Malta for his reaction to the number of prison deaths. 

Eleven deaths were reported at the Corradino Correctional Facility over the past two years.