A Criminal Court ruled yesterday that the Attorney General had filed an application too late according to law, and therefore declared the application null and void.
The Criminal Court, presided over by Chief Justice Vincent de Gaetano, ruled that the AG’s request for Alphonse Abela’s re-arrest had been filed outside the parameters prescribed by law.
Mr Abela, the former secretary of the Public Transport Association, is facing criminal proceedings on a charge of defrauding several government departments of around Lm89,000.
He had originally been arraigned in court between January 2000 and December 2001, charged with defrauding a number of government departments.
In April 2003, he was discharged when the Magistrates’ Court declared that there was insufficient prima facie evidence for a bill of indictment to be issued against him.
However, one month later, Mr Abela was rearrested after the Attorney General filed an application for an arrest warrant in terms of Article 433 of the Criminal Code. This article states that the Attorney General has the power to request the re-arrest of a person discharged by the Magistrates’ Court if he and a judge agreed that there were, in fact, sufficient grounds for the person to be indicted.
However, earlier this year, in the case against Joseph Lebrun, a Constitutional Court ruled that Article 433 was likely to breach a person’s right to a fair hearing and as a result of this judgement, parliament approved a bill amending the Criminal Code and Article 433 was amended.
By way of the amended version of Article 433, the person involved has the right to contest his re-arrest and it is also stipulated that this process (the request for someone’s re-arrest) takes place in open court. The amended version approved by parliament was made retroactive and included all the cases in which people were rearrested on the basis of this Article, which was declared anti-constitutional. It gave the prosecution one month from when the amendment was enacted – 27 April – to regulate its position with regard to these cases.
The Criminal Court heard that more than one month had passed since this amendment was enacted and that the prosecution had not regulated its position with regard to this case. The court, therefore ruled that the Attorney General’s application was null and void.
Dr Franco Debono appeared for Mr Abela.