A contention by the Attorney General, that magistrates are perfectly capable of defining “immoral acts” and that the law does not need any definition of this, has been upheld by the Appeals Court in its constitutional jurisdiction.

The appeal was made after the Constitutional Court decided in February that four men who were accused of acting immorally had had their fundamental rights breached because in Malta, the law is not clear about what is moral and what is not.

Frank Cachia, 38 of Msida, Michael Ciappara, 72 of Cospicua, Mario Ciappara, 37, of Qawra, and Anthony Azzopardi, 29 of Ħamrun, were arraigned on various charges, including running a brothel at Maximus in Buġibba.

The men’s lawyers have said that after the Appeals Court decision, they will take their case to the European Court in Strasbourg, having exhausted all legal remedies available in Malta.

According to the details of the case, four Romanian girls had been found by the police scantily dressed while dancing or sitting at the bar talking to men. In 2008, the four men had been acquitted with defence counsel arguing in the Criminal Appeals Court that their clients’ fundamental human rights had been violated because the laws in Malta, unlike abroad, do not define what constitutes “immoral actions”.

Mr Justice Joseph R. Micallef, had said in the Constitutional Court that the right for one to know what the crime involved was included in the right to a fair hearing. The case related to women not “properly dressed” who were dancing, in some cases bare breasted, and who were making a show which included striptease acts.

But Mr Justice Tonio Mallia, Mr Justice Giannino Caruana Demajo, and Mr Justice Geoffrey Valenzia, found that there was no shortcoming relating to certainty in the law, which made it impossible for any member of the judiciary to decide what is, or what is not immoral.

Defence lawyers Edward Gatt and Therese Comodini Cachia had argued that the law is not clear about what constitutes immoral action and this leads to uncertainty in the law, in violation of their clients’ human rights.