Two contest validity of extradition law

A Belgian and a Maltese man who underwent separate extradition proceedings yesterday joined forces to file an application in court claiming that the law under which the Magistrates' Court had ordered their extradition was null and void.

Belgian Serge Geryl and Maltese Carmelo Borg filed the application against the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General in the First Hall of the Civil Court.

Mr Serge is wanted in Belgium, where he had been convicted to a 10-year jail term for his involvement in a hold-up, while Mr Borg is wanted by Italian authorities in connection with the Maundy Thursday drowning of six Chinese and Mongolian illegal immigrants some 15 miles off Sicily after they were allegedly forced off a boat that had reportedly left from Malta.

The two men underwent separate extradition proceedings before Magistrate Joseph Apap Bologna in the Magistrates' Court and, in both cases, the magistrate ruled that he was satisfied that there were grounds for extradition.

In the joint application filed yesterday Mr Geryl and Mr Borg explained that the warrant for their extradition had been issued on the strength of a European Arrest Warrant which had come into force through subsidiary legislation enacted by the Minister of Justice.

They claimed that, in enacting the subsidiary legislation, the minister had exceeded the powers granted to him by the parent act and this meant that the subsidiary legislation was null and void.

For this reason both men fell back on the Constitution which granted them the right to attack the validity of the law.

Lawyers José Herrera and Edward Zammit Lewis signed the application.