Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri must resign and former Director of Prisons Alexander Dalli must be dismissed from any public function, Repubblika wrote in a statement on Saturday.
A report published on Friday by the Ombudsman has concluded that there was systemic maladministration at the Corradino Correctional Facility during Dalli’s tenure as Director of Prisons from July 2018 to December 2021.
Repubblika stated that what emerged from the report confirms what many journalists have repeatedly reported about regarding what was happening within the prison since 2018. The NGO continued that the Ombudsman found that there was poor administration, degrading treatment of prisoners, and the use of intimidation as an administrative tool.
The NGO continued that the Ombudsman “confirmed what we have known for a long time about the administration of Alexander Dalli”. Repubblika said that systematic violations of the law took place within the prison, “while Minister Byron Camilleri continued to insist on keeping Alexander Dalli in place and defending his administration”. It continued that after Dalli stopped working at the prison, Camilleri then appointed him as representative of the Maltese state in Libya, a role which he still holds.
Repubblika acknowledged that it is not the Ombudsman’s duty to determine who should bear the political responsibility for the “systematically bad administration of the prison”, but added that the political responsibility is still there and must be shouldered.
It added that the police should immediately investigate what criminal actions were carried out by government officials who may have maliciously oppressed prisoners entrusted with their responsibility.
“If state employees have abused their power to force people to suffer and perhaps even die, it is the state’s obligation to act against them according to the law. Otherwise, the injustice becomes double,” Repubblika remarked. The NGO added that these abuses have been known of for years due to the reporting of journalists based on witnesses, both prison employees and detainees, “who took great risks to expose the abuse that was happening”.
“There are few cases that can better explain how bad the reforms that the government wants to make are,” Repubblika remarked. It continued that the government wants to grant immunity from criminal liability to its employees, and that it wants to disqualify evidence of journalistic quality from being used to request a magisterial inquiry into allegations of abuses by government officials. “Not only did the police not investigate Alexander Dalli and the other officers who the Ombudsman said were imitating him,” the NGO commented, “but Minister Byron Camilleri defended him and promoted him.”