Mr Justice C. Farrugia Sacco yesterday started hearing a constitutional application filed by a man who is claiming that his fundamental human rights would be violated by the deportation of his pregnant Russian partner from Malta.

Anthony Borg had previously obtained a warrant of prohibitory injunction by which the police commissioner was provisionally impeded from deporting Nadezda Gavrilova.

In his constitutional application Borg claimed he and Gavrilova were cohabiting as long-term partners and that she was seven weeks pregnant with his child.

Borg was legally separated from his wife but claimed that he and Gavrilova were planning marriage after he obtained an annulment of his marriage.

However, on November 30, Gavrilova was arrested by the police who informed Borg that she was an illegal immigrant and that she would be deported. Gavrilova had also told Borg she would obtain an abortion upon her return to the Russian Federation, where this was legal.

Borg requested the First Hall of the Civil Court to declare that Gavrilova's deportation would be in violation of the unborn child's right to life and that his fundamental human right to protection of family life would be violated.

The police commissioner pleaded that no violation of human rights had occurred for he had fulfilled his duties according to law. Gavrilova was arrested and kept in detention on the grounds that she was an illegal immigrant. Foreigners who were married to Maltese were entitled to obtain a residence permit but the law did not consider cohabitation for the purposes of immigration.

Were Borg's application to be upheld, this would bring about the danger of foreign women placing themselves in situations similar to that of Gavrilova in order to remain in the country, the commissioner submitted.

Although Maltese law considered abortion to be a crime, abortion was legal in other countries, including other member states of the European Union and Maltese law could not prevent a foreign national from returning to her own country to carry out an act permissible there.

The commissioner denied violating Borg's human rights. Borg had merely alleged that he was the father of the unborn child and, furthermore, he had produced no evidence to show that Gavrilova intended to obtain an abortion.

Even if it were true that Gavrilova had declared this intention, her evidence would not be reliable as there was a clear interest on her part in not being deported back to Russia.

Furthermore, even if Borg were the father of the child, Gavrilova was the mother and if she left Malta according to law she was entitled to do whatever she wished so long as she did not violate the law of the country she was in.