An inmate at the Corradino Correctional Facility and the woman he wants to marry have taken their legal struggle to realise their wish one step further by filing a constitutional case against the Prisons Director.

Meliza Muscat, the woman who last week poured out her story on a local television show, filed an application before the First Hall, Civil Court, together with her boyfriend, Yousef Essesi, claiming that the refusal by the prison director to allow the couple to tie the knot amounted to a breach of their fundamental rights.

The couple, who have been in a relationship for a number of months, had first expressed their wish to marry back in June 2018, asking the director to allow Mr Essesi to exit the facility under escort, so as to make it to the Public Registry at Valletta where the couple were to apply for publication of the marriage bans.

Leave was granted and the bans were eventually published, fixing the marriage for a set date.

However, trouble brewed when 10 days before the important date, the groom-to-be was told that he was not to be allowed to step out of prison to take his marriage vows.

Following that news, the man was transferred to another division, not intended for solitary confinement, where he ended up spending some seven months all alone.

In May, the couple instructed their lawyer to attempt another request for the director to green-light the marriage. But to no avail.

Faced with another refusal, the couple took the matter a step further, filing a judicial protest in the hope of reaching a solution.

However, a day after the filing of that protest, prison wardens turned up to accompany Mr Essesi to Division 6 (solitary confinement), stopping along the way when they met the director himself who allegedly declared, “As long as I’m here, I won’t let you marry - tell your lawyer. And thank your girlfriend.”

After that, the inmate was escorted to a cell where, after being stripped of his clothes, was left “for three days... all alone, naked, without a mattress or a blanket.”

From then on, his girlfriend was barred from visiting. In fact, the couple last met on July 29.

Such a situation amounted to a breach of their right to marry as well as the right to respect for private and family life. The treatment allegedly meted out to the man behind bars also amounted to a breach of his right to protection against torture, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, the applicants claimed.

In light of all this, the applicants requested the court to order the Prisons Director to take all steps for the marriage to take place, to declare a breach of their rights and to establish compensation accordingly.

Lawyers Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo signed the application.