The case concerns a Sudanese applicant who crossed the external borders of the EU on 26 August 2019 by entering Malta and lodged an application for international protection in Malta on 16 October 2019. The applicant claimed to have been imprisoned for nine months immediately after his arrival in Malta. He left the country and entered the Netherlands on 14 October 2020, where he applied for a temporary asylum residence permit. The State Secretary submitted a transfer request to the Maltese authorities on 2 December 2020 which was accepted on 10 December 2020. The State Secretary did not consider the application for a temporary asylum residence permit as it considered Malta responsible for this. The applicant appealed the decision on grounds that he risks inhumane and degrading treatment upon transfer to Malta, as he already experienced when he entered illegally and was detained for nine months without judicial review, legal aid and in violation of the Reception Directive, humiliated and subjected to physical and psychological abuse. The applicant claimed that the asylum system in Malta has systemic shortcomings in the area of reception and detention and the international principle of trust is wrongly assumed. He referred to Applicant vs State Secretary for Security and Justice (Staatssecretaris van Justitie en Veiligheid) of July 2020 and to a number of reports, including AIDA reports on Malta 2018 and 2019, UNHCR Universal Periodic Review Malta report (July 2018) and FRA reports from 2020. The State Secretary held that the applicant did not prove that the detention and reception conditions in Malta are so poor that they result in inhumane and degrading treatment.

The court made reference to the above case and the AIDA reports and stated that it cannot rule on the applicant transfer to Malta now based on the AIDA reports, as these make reference to facts and circumstances up to and including 31 December 2019. The court stated that the parties should conduct a full and ex nunc investigation into the question of whether the quality of the asylum procedure and / or the reception and / or the risk of illegal immigration detention and the detention conditions put the applicant at risk of inhumane and degrading treatment in case of return. Both parties indicated they would not be ready to contact the Maltese authorities to ascertain the current facts and circumstances. The court ruled that it will itself investigate further the situation of Dublin applicants after transfer to Malta. In view of the cooperation between Malta and EASO, ruled by the 2021 Operating Plan, the court stated that it would refer to EASO to clarify the current quality of the asylum procedure, asylum reception, the immigration detention procedure and the detention conditions in Malta. The court made reference to the Feilazoo vs. Malta case, where the ECtHR established a violation of Article 3 and Article 5(1) ECHR in connection with the detention conditions.