A woman whose husband has been missing for several months and is believed to have set fire to their matrimonial home has won back access to the house in a human rights case.

A court ruled that she was suffering “irreparable harm” by not being allowed into the Mosta home pending the outcome of separation proceedings before the Family Court.

The woman, Pauline Pisani, had claimed that, although the magisterial inquiry into the fire had been concluded, she was still locked out due to pending separation proceedings.

The court was meant to have appointed someone to appear on her husband’s behalf for the case to proceed but this had not yet happened, she said.

Her husband, Marcel Pisani, is the 50-year-old wheelchair user who has been missing since December 31.

The police have issued four appeals for help to locate him.

In July, they said searches had been carried out along the whole coastline of Malta and Gozo on land while the armed forces had searched from the air and the Civil Protection Department in several areas at sea.

Pisani drove a blue Renault Captur with a cream-coloured roof.

Madam Justice Anna Felice quoted from a European Court of Human Rights manual on interim measures, which says urgent ones are “applicable only where there is a risk of irreparable harm”.

In this case, prima facie, Pisani’s human rights were being breached by the authorities’ refusal to allow her to return to the Mosta home, the judge said.

She also noted that the “pitiful state of affairs” Pisani found herself in were not frivolous and vexatious, as the attorney general had referred to them in a reply to the woman’s claims of breaches to her human rights. Constitutional proceedings on these claims are still pending.

In her application requesting interim measures, filed in July, Pisani claimed that, in 2017, her husband had tried to end his life and ended up in a wheelchair.

She modified the matrimonial home so that her husband could lead a normal life. However, their marriage had broken down. She left with her son and moved in with her mother. She said she was receiving assistance from the Domestic Violence Unit and the Victims Support Agency.

Through her lawyer, Rachel Tua, the woman claimed that the matrimonial home had been sealed for months and she was unable to gain access to any of her belongings. Moreover, the house had sustained damage in the fire, including the window panes.

Volunteers needed for clean-up

Tua told Times of Malta yesterday that, now that her client had regained access to the home, which had been badly damaged in the fire, she was organising a clean-up where people could come and lend a hand.

Those willing to help could meet at the former Subaru showroom, in Mosta, on Saturday at 9am.