“I am very happy and relieved that the fight for justice has finally been won,” Meliza Muscat told Times of Malta after winning a constitutional case against the prison director.
The court ruled that the prison director, Alex Dalli, had breached her and her boyfriend’s rights when he did not let them get married in 2019. Her partner, Yousef Essesi, was a prison inmate.
“It was a long and stressful journey and it was very difficult at times but I am glad that I plucked up the courage to speak out,” she said.
Prison officials treated him inhumanely after my public appearance- Meliza Muscat
Muscat and Essesi’s story made the headlines in 2019 after the couple decided to go public about the problems they were facing with the prison authorities. Dalli had first allowed marriage preparations to go ahead and then changed his mind just 10 days before the set date.
Muscat appeared on Xarabank in November 2019, claiming Dalli would not let Essesi be escorted to Valletta for a 30-minute civil marriage ceremony and that she was not allowed to visit him in prison.
'Stark naked inside a bare cell'
After filing a judicial protest to acquire the right to marry, Muscat said that Essesi was locked in the prison’s Division 6 as a punishment for three days in the middle of summer with no mattress, fan or toilet.
The court concluded that the applicants’ right to marry and private family life had been breached and the man’s detention “stark naked inside a bare cell without even a mattress” amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment.
“It wasn’t easy to speak out. I knew that going on Xarabank to make the story public was risky but letting injustice reign was not an option,” she said.
“And, indeed, there were consequences after Xarabank and the magistrate found that prison officials treated him inhumanely after my public appearance.”
The court heard how, after the Xarabank episode, Essesi was sent to Division 6 again without any reason. It concluded that such transfer was “payback” and not justified.
Essesi was awarded €1,000 in moral damages while Muscat was awarded €500.
Who will take responsibility for the injustice?
Journalist and Xarabank presenter Peppi Azzopardi said that this court decision reaffirms that Xarabank and other media were right to call out the “degrading and inhuman” ways in which inmates were “treated like rubbish”.
“But being right is not enough. Who will take responsibility for the injustice that these people suffered,” he told Times of Malta.
“As we speak, there are people serving prison sentences for stealing two bottles of perfume and our justice system incarcerated them because they were repeat offenders. Others are serving sentences for crimes they committed 15 years ago.
“Justice keeps chasing these people and, when they’re found guilty, it shows them no mercy. But when the prison administration is found guilty, nothing happens,” he said.