NEWS | Wednesday, 14 January 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Raphael Vassallo
Fair Trials International, a UK-based charity specialising in unfair judicial processes outside the United Kingdom, has criticised last week’s conviction of a British citizen to 25 years over conspiracy to drug trafficking, arguing that the Maltese authorities appear to have been “desperate to secure a conviction for something at any cost.”
Steven Marsden, 48, was arrested at the Malta seaport terminal in June 2006, after 50,000 pills were discovered hidden in 28 sachets behind the panelling of his Mitsubishi Pajero.
The pills were originally mistaken for ecstasy, and the police announced the find as the “largest local ecstasy haul” ever.
But court-appointed expert Mario Mifsud, a pharmacologist with the National laboratory, established that the pills were not ecstasy at all, but another substance – mccP – which was not actually illegal at the time of importation.
The prosecution consequently changed the bill of indictment from “drug trafficking” to “conspiracy to commit a crime”: arguing that Marsden had imported the pills under the impression that they were, in fact, ecstasy.
Marsden himself has consistently denied this charge, claiming to have come to Malta precisely because the substance was not illegal.
Despite a public correction and the subsequent amendment to the charges, certain sections of the local media continued to describe the pills as “ecstasy” right until the final sentence last Wednesday, when a jury found Marsden guilty by eight votes to one.
The case appears to have opened a legal can of worms, with some observers commenting that the conviction smacks of “thought-crime”: the pre-emptive judgement on a person who may have had the intention to commit a crime, but who did not actually do anything illegal.
Foremost among the critics is Dr Jago Russel, director of Fair Trials International. “Steven Marsden was not carrying illegal drugs but, despite this, he has been found guilty of conspiracy and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment,” Russel said on Monday in reaction to the verdict. “Steven will appeal against the verdict and FTI hopes that his ordeal will be quickly brought to an end.”
But Dr Andrew Borg Cardona, president of the Chamber of Advocates, dismissed talk of “thought-crime”, arguing that while the public may have reservations about the verdict, there was no questioning the validity of the legal process used to reach it.
“In this case, the Attorney General decided that there was enough evidence to present charges against Mr Marsden for conspiracy to commit a crime,” he told MaltaToday. “The defendant’s lawyer would have argued differently, and ultimately the jury decided in favour of the AG and against Marsden. People are free to agree or disagree with their decision, or for that matter with the judge’s sentence; but ultimately, this is why we have a Court of Criminal Appeal, as well as a Constitutional Court.”
The case has meanwhile also cast a spotlight on a number of questionable legal practices in Malta, such as the routine denial of legal representation during interrogation.
Marsden – like all detainees – was interrogated without any access to a lawyer, and FTI had already accused the Maltese authorities of serious human rights violations before the trial even began. “(Marsden) is being pressurised into pleading guilty so that a conviction can be secured,” the NGO claimed on its website.
Following the European Court of Human Right’s ruling last year in the Salduz case against Turkey (36391/02), access to legal representation under arrest is now considered a human right.

Marsden case
www.fairtrials.net

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.