An Albanian man who is facing extradition to Greece over a double murder is disputing a fingerprint expert's conclusion that the man’s prints matched those sent over by Greek authorities. 

Ledjon Brakaj’s lawyers are challenging the “outdated and nowadays seldom used system” employed by the court-appointed fingerprint expert.

They did so through an application before the Magistrates’ Court that is hearing extradition proceedings. 

Brakaj is alleged to have been involved in a 2015 double murder on a Greek island, in which a woman and her nephew were robbed of €780,000, tortured and then set on fire. 

The suspect was arrested in Marsascala last month, seven years after the crime. 

Brakaj’s lawyers had initially disputed the extradition to Greece by noting that the European Arrest Warrant listed a different name for the wanted person. 

To help settle that issue, Greek authorities sent a copy of fingerprints pertaining to “Hoxha Ashar”, the name listed in the EAW, to their Maltese counterparts.

Police analysis concluded that the prints pertaining to Ashar matched those of Brakaj. 

However, to avoid any doubt, the court tasked a fingerprint expert with lifting Brakaj’s fingerprints, to compare them to Brakaj’s. 

The expert reached the same conclusion as the police, saying they appeared to be identical and were of the same person. 

Brakaj’s legal team has however cast doubt on the fingerprints sent from Greece, as well as the conclusion reached by the locally-appointed expert.

In their court application, defence lawyers argued that there was nothing in the records to show how those prints had been lifted in Greece, nor when, nor by who and not even how they had since been preserved. 

Furthermore, the European Court of Human Rights held that the retention of a person’s fingerprints for an indefinite term amounted to a breach of the individual’s right to private and family life, they said. 

Moreover, no Maltese or English translation of documents sent by the Greek authorities, was available. 

The defence is also objecting to the local fingerprint expert’s methodology. The “Henry System” he used is outdated, they are arguing, and is limited to a visual analysis that is susceptible to human error. 

They questioned how the expert could conclude that there was a positive match, when the expert report itself noted that the left palm print on the Greek copy lacked certain characteristics, since parts of the print were missing and others were smudged with ink, and that the paper used for the photocopy was of poor quality. 

When all was considered, the expert’s results could not be relied upon by the court and were to be removed from the records of the case, Brakaj’s defence argued.

Lawyers Franco Debono, Marion Camilleri and Francesca Zarb were defence counsel.