The arrest of Matthew Schembri and Kurt Buhagiar in connection with the Jean Paul Sofia case was declared legal by a court on Saturday.

Schembri and Buhagiar, through their lawyers, argued that there had been a breach of their fundamental human rights, as enshrined in the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The court application was filed before the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction by lawyers Franco Debono, Arthur Azzopardi, and Jacob Magri. They claimed that Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg is withholding evidence from the suspects and the police.

The judicial protest alleged that the police were only given the conclusion of the magisterial inquiry by the Attorney General, not the full process-verbal. Their lawyers argued that when they asked for disclosure, they were told by the police that only the conclusions of the inquiry would be made available to them, because the police themselves did not have access to the inquiry in full. This, the lawyers argued, prevented them from being able to advice their clients properly.

Deputy AG Philip Galea Farrugia countered that the arrest was legitimate because it is based on the conclusions of the magisterial inquiry and that search and arrest warrants were obtained from the duty magistrate before the two suspects had been arrested. 

In a decree on Saturday afternoon, magistrate Ian Farrugia dismissed their request, deeming that the arrest was valid. He ruled that the fact that they were not given the full report did not make their arrest illegal.

Sofia died when a building under construction in Kordin collapsed on 3 December.

A magisterial inquiry was concluded on Friday, following which the police arrested five persons.

The government, after refusing the idea for several months, will be setting up a public inquiry.