European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment: Report on Visit to Malta

Date: 
Friday, October 4, 2013

The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment adopted a report drawn up following its visit to Malta in September 2011. The CPT examined conditions at detention centres for foreigners. The CPT has major concerns with practices observed at the two detention centres in use, including: the excessive use of force against foreign nationals; removal of foreigners from detention centres to prisons without any formal procedure or explanation; and an overall lack of respect shown to the detainees (e.g., referring to them by file number rather than name). The CPT took issue with the fact that female detainees are largely supervised exclusively by male officers and recommended that more females be hired to work at the centres.

 The CPT notes that conditions at the detention centres had significantly improved but were still severely inadequate in some areas, including overcrowding and insufficient availability of health care services. Additionally, the CPT claims that management at the centres attempted to hide complaints lodged by foreign nationals from them. The report calls on the Maltese government to address these issues and provides a list of recommendations.

 

Read the full text of the report on the CoE website.

 


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Keywords: 
Inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
Detention
Tags: 
Council of Europe
Slovakia
Luxembourg