Maltese man loses constitutional challenge against his extradition to the US in Pegasus spyware case
A constitutional challenge to the extradition of a Maltese man to the US to face charges related to selling spyware online has been rejected because fair trial safeguards only apply to extradition proceedings where the requesting country routinely an
A constitutional challenge to the extradition of a Maltese man to the US to face charges related to selling spyware online has been rejected because fair trial safeguards only apply to extradition proceedings where the requesting country routinely and flagrantly breached that right.
This emerges from a judgement handed down on Thursday morning, in which Madam Justice Doreen Clarke dismissed the constitutional case filed by Daniel Joseph Meli on that ground, also rejecting his claim to have suffered a breach of his fair trial rights, noting that he had even been allowed to file an appeal, despite him having agreed to his extradition.
Meli was arrested on February 7 in an coordinated operation involving the Malta Police Force, the Office of the Attorney General of Malta and US authorities.
The Northern District of Georgia requested Meli's extradition after he was indicted in December 2023 for criminal offences related to unlawful computer access, damage and interception. US prosecutors accuse Meli of having offered to sell malware products and services, amongst them the Pegasus remote access trojan (RAT), to cybercriminals on online forums "since at least 2012".
When Meli was arraigned on February 9 he had consented to the extradition request. But Meli subsequently filed an appeal after changing lawyers, arguing that the court had not taken into account his history of mental illness.
Last February, that appeal was rejected by Mr. Justice Neville Camilleri, who ruled that the Court of Magistrates was not meant to examine whether or not his acceptance of the extradition request had been made voluntarily, nor was it required to order a physical or psychological examination of the defendants who entered pleas before it.
In a decision delivered on Thursday morning in the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction, Madam Justice Doreen Clarke acknowledged that Maltese court decisions varied in their interpretations on the applicability of constitutional fair trial safeguards to extradition proceedings.
There was a time when the application of the relevant articles of the constitution had been extended to such cases, but the more recent decisions, and the overall majority, had held that they weren't. The same exclusionary approach to extradition proceedings had also been adopted by the European Court of Human Rights, observed the judge.
The ECHR's guidelines only admit such claims in exceptional circumstances where the extradition would result in a "flagrant denial of a fair trial in the requesting country." The "flagrant denial of justice" test is a stringent one, which the ECHR first deemed to have been satisfied by a claimant, over twenty years after its introduction.
Citing a string of judgements and quoting from relevant guidelines, Madame Justice Doreen Clarke observed that "there can be no doubt about the inapplicability of Article 6 [of the European Convention on Human Rights] to extradition cases, and that the only exception to this rule is when there is a serious risk of the person concerned suffering a flagrant denial of justice in the country to which they are to be returned, being subjected to a judicial process that is manifestly contrary to the provisions of article 6."
The judge noted that Meli was not suggesting that he would incur this type of human rights breach in the US, and so upheld the State Advocate's argument in this regard.
The State's second argument was that Meli did not have the necessary juridical interest or "victim status" - an essential element of any legal action relating to a potential or actual human rights breach.
The court noted that although one of Meli's complaint was that the subject of extradition proceedings had no legal right to file an appeal after having consented to it, he had nonetheless been allowed to file an appeal, which had been duly rejected - not out of hand, although this would have been legally correct - but in a judgement where the court had examined the merits of the individual grounds of appeal. This undermined his claim to have victim status, said the judge.
All of Meli's requests were rejected by the courts, which also ordered him to suffer the costs of the case.
Lawyers Franco Debono and Arthur Azzopardi assisted Daniel Joe Meli.
Lawyer Julian Farrugia represented the State Advocate in the proceedings.
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