A 36-year-old German man who was arrested by Sliema police was found dead in his cell at 22.40h yesterday.
Efforts to give the man first aid were futile, a police statement read.
Police Commissioner Michael Cassar said that preliminary indications led him to believe that the man took his own life.
The man was due to be arraigned in court today and the police said he had lived in Malta for three months. The man was arrested yesterday in Msida, for attempted theft and drug use and did not have a place of residence. He was also taken to Mater Dei Hospital for methadone
A Magisterial inquiry by Duty Magistrate Galea Sciberras is underway, and she has nominated a number of experts to assist.
The police will provide CCTV footage to help in the inquiry, as well as provide any other information required to ensure full transparency. The police themselves will not be investigating the case and will leave it up to the Magistrate. This, the Commissioner said, was done for the sake of transparency, considering the incident occurred at the police lock-up.
This is the second case of a person being found dead at the lock-up in the past few months. The first, surrounds the death of a maltese man from Zejtun, who was found with a bedsheet around his neck last October. Since then, the Commissioner said, physical inspections of prisoners in the cells occur more frequently, and in this case, the man was checked 10-15 minutes before the incident.
The October inquiry is still ongoing.
There are no CCTV cameras inside the cells themselves, but there are in the corridors. This, Commissioner Cassar said, was for prisoner privacy, however he admitted that he is considering installing cameras inside the cells.
He said that there were four officers present at the lock-up at the time, three male officers and one female officer.
The Commissioner explained that the United Nation's Committee for Prevention of Torture, through a preliminary report, found that the Maltese lock-up was compliant with standards. This report came out just before the October incident.