When 19 people were led into court on 1 November 2002 amid tight security, the prosecution had every reason to feel pleased with itself. Police had spent months listening in on telephone calls from Corradino, where four of Malta's most infamous inmates were suspected of running a drug importation plot through their wives, girlfriends, brothers and sons.

Together with the Italian police, they believed they had foiled it.

Emanuel "Noel" Borg was 29 when he was marched into court under arrest that day. He was 50 when the Court of Appeal finally confirmed his acquittal, on 13 September 2023.

Last month, Judge Lawrence Mintoff ruled the wait was itself a violation of his fundamental rights. He awarded him €12,000 for non-pecuniary damage, to be paid by the State and the Attorney General within the month.

Borg testified he lost his job in marine repairs and was refused permission to travel, so he missed out on work in Dubai and France.

With his property frozen, he said, he could not get a business overdraft or buy a home with his partner. He had put off having children for fear of prison. The five years the Attorney General's appeal sat awaiting judgment, he said, "put his life on hold".

The State had argued that the case was complex, and that the delay only counted if it was "capricious". But Judge Mintoff said that the prosecution had made decisions that fed the delay, "and the delay on its side stands out far more".

Borg is among at least a dozen of the accused in the plot to have been acquitted at some stage. In several cases, when the courts found that once statements taken without a lawyer were excluded, the remaining evidence fell short. Two of the alleged ringleaders were convicted in Malta.

The alleged plot

In December 2001, the Drugs Squad were tipped off that a consignment of cocaine, cannabis and other drugs would be bought in Holland, driven down to Sicily and brought to Malta by sea or by car.

The alleged brains of the operation were prison inmates Emanuel "Leli l-Bully" Camilleri, Mario "l-Imnieħru" Camilleri, Charles "il-Pips" Muscat and Alfred "il-Porporina" Bugeja. They were said to be running the plan by mobile phone, which prisoners were forbidden to have, while their relatives did the legwork on the outside.

Cocaine and cannabis were allegedly bought in Holland and driven down to Sicily, where rough seas scuppered the planned crossing to Malta. This was the second attempt. The men had to fly back home empty-handed the on the first try, as they had not brought enough cash to buy the drugs, and the supplier would not hand anything over.

On that second run, when an Italian police search rattled the couriers, they allegedly buried the haul near a tunnel outside Palermo. A Maltese inspector flew over, dug it up and swapped it for dummy packets.

On May 30, 2002, Raymond "il-Borza" Borg and Fabio Psaila were arrested in Sicily as they came to collect the packages. Both served four years there.

Police alleged Noel Borg's role was the boat. They filmed him and co-accused Daniel-Victor Bonnici launching a 27-foot speedboat at Buġibba in April 2002, which they said was earmarked to bring the drugs over from Sicily.

'Absolutely nothing was done'

The judge said that the case was no simple one, but said its complexity "does not justify the passage of 21 years before a final decision was given".

The prosecution's conduct, he said, had dragged things out "not only in the initial phase of the proceedings, where perhaps one would still be investigating and examining the case, but also in the following years, when the prosecution was supposed to have a clear idea of the witnesses and the evidence it wanted to bring".

"Throughout the criminal proceedings there emerge many more circumstances of delay like this, which do not appear to be justified," he said. The State, he added, had brought "no argument or proof of justification" for them.

The record bears this out. In 2008, a magistrate noticed the file had never been sent to the Attorney General as the law required, and the compilation of evidence had to start all over again. Borg, however, waived his right to have the witnesses heard all over again.

The bill of indictment was filed in October 2009. When Magistrate Francesco Depasquale eventually acquitted Mr Borg in 2018, he said that between 15 October 2009 and 29 December 2014, "absolutely nothing was done".

Even after the case was sent back down to the Magistrates' Court, it barely moved. In 2015 the court warned that "this case is a very old one and needs to be closed". It gave the prosecution three weeks to say what evidence it had left. None was produced at the next sitting.

Over 28 sittings, the prosecution called four witnesses. Three of them declined to testify.

The Attorney General appealed. The appeal was argued in November 2018, then sat waiting until it was reassigned to another judge in January 2023.

The courts were not let off the hook either. Obtaining evidence from Italy "could certainly have been far more expeditious". The roughly five years the case spent in each of the Criminal Court and the Court of Appeal "was in fact also excessive, especially when this delay does not appear to have had anything to do with the applicant". 

"All this also shows the judicial authority's share in the delay," the judge said, finding that Borg had "caused no significant delay".

"It is true that there is not, and should not be, any time limit to be observed in proceedings before the courts," he said. "However, this should never mean that those proceedings should drag on for nothing, or that any delay is excused."

"Any excessive delay is very significant, so much so that even a mere few days can be of great import in a person's life."

The lawyer they never had

Like his co-accused, Mr Borg was questioned by police in August 2002 without a lawyer. Suspects had no right to consult a lawyer before police questioning until February 2010.

For years, the Constitutional Court held that such a statement breached fair-trial rights only if it had actually harmed the accused. One of the leading judgments setting out that approach was brought by Charles Muscat, one of the inmates accused of running this very plot.

That changed in 2016, when the European Court of Human Rights ruled in an unrelated case, Borg v Malta, that a blanket denial of a lawyer was in itself a breach of fair-trial rights. Maltese courts soon began throwing out such statements.

In this case, the statements had been the backbone of the prosecution. Then-Magistrate Depasquale laid the blame at the State's door, in a passage repeated in several judgments arising from the case.

He said the court had to assess the accused's involvement on evidence that "was drastically reduced as a result of a failure on the part of the executive authorities of the time". Those authorities, he said, "refused for entire years to introduce the right, legislated but never made effective, for the accused to be assisted by a lawyer".

"In the present case, all the statements were made in violation of that right, and are therefore totally inadmissible," he wrote. "And whoever failed to introduce that right enshrined in law must shoulder his responsibilities."

With the statements out, the court turned to the intercepted calls.

 In Borg's case, it found they dealt with boats, cars, the weather and whether the sea would be rough. They contained "no concrete proof in connection with the charges". Nor, the court said in Bonnici's, had any proof ever been produced of who owned the speedboat.

One acquittal after another

Mona Camilleri, Mario Camilleri's wife, was acquitted in April 2016. John Camilleri, Leli's brother, followed in September 2017. In his case, the magistrate said he was "morally convinced" of his involvement.

But without the statement, the evidence fell short of proof beyond reasonable doubt. The Strasbourg-led change in the law, he said, "helped the accused a great deal".

In June 2018, alongside Borg and Bonnici, then-Magistrate Depasquale acquitted Yvette Muscat, Trudy Testa, Pierre Camilleri, Carmen Armeni, Sylvana Bugeja, Juma Said Karfoosh, Suzanne Abela and Albert Bugeja. Isaac Chetcuti was cleared of conspiracy but fined €2,000 over a small amount of cannabis.

The Attorney General appealed against most of those acquittals, and it was turned down.

Those who were convicted

Leli Camilleri, already serving 35 years for the 1995 bombing of the home of then-Drug Squad inspector Michael Cassar, admitted the charges. In December 2015 he was jailed for a further 11 years and fined €20,000. Days later, Alfred Bugeja was jailed for seven years.

Mario Camilleri was murdered in July 2013, together with his 21-year-old son.

Emanuel Borg had asked for compensation for the work and income he lost over the years, but the judge turned that down, finding the losses neither proved nor quantifiable. The €12,000 he was awarded is for the breach of his rights alone.

That breach, he said, had worked against Borg "in the enjoyment of his rights, and more than that, of his dignity".