According to the press release of the ECtHR:

"The applicants are six Bangladeshi nationals who arrived in Malta on 18 November 2022 after being rescued at sea with around another 40 individuals. The applicants claimed to be 16-17 years old. They were taken to the Ħal Far Initial Reception Centre (HIRC) with the rest of the group and were made to stay in what they considered to be inappropriate and overcrowded conditions with little to no access to an outside area, a common area, a prayer room, private space, warm clothes, games or books. They were issued with detention orders on 30 November 2022. The legality of their detention was confirmed by the Immigration Appeals Tribunal (IAB) on 6 December 2022 at a mass hearing for the group, during which the IAB noted that all the applicants except for J.B. were under 18 and that a legal guardian had to be appointed. The Principal Immigration Officer explained that they were being detained while their identities were being checked and to make sure they did not abscond.
The six applicants made a successful application to the Court for an interim measure under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court on 11 January 2023. The Court indicated to the Government of Malta that they must ensure that the applicants’ conditions were compatible with Article 3 of the Convention and with their status as unaccompanied minors.
An initial age assessment carried out in mid-January 2023 found the six of them to be 18 or over. Although they all appealed against that decision, some of them subsequently signed documents certifying that they were adults. However, as those documents had been signed in the absence of a legal representative and an interpreter, the appeal procedure was reinstated.
Subsequent vulnerability-assessment reports indicated that the applicants had “significantly elevated” or “extremely high” levels of anxiety, depression, acute stress and post-traumatic stress disorder. Requests to the Principal Immigration Officers to release them due to their vulnerability were submitted on 23 April 2023 and again five days later, but no official response was forthcoming. However, the following month, their representatives were told informally that, since updated reports from the end of April showed that the applicants were faring better, no alternatives to detention would be considered.
Later that month, J.B. was transferred to an adult section of the Safi Detention Centre, as the passport he had been carrying upon arrival had been checked and authenticated and clearly showed that he was an adult. The other applicants’ appeals were upheld, and they were subsequently released and accommodated in an open centre for minors.
An application made by J.B. for international protection was rejected and he was issued with a return decision and removal order in July 2023. He left Malta on 22 August 2023.

Relying on Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights, the applicants complained about their conditions of detention, alleging among other things that they had been threatened and harassed by detention officials and other detainees. They compared their conditions to those described by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) in its Report of March 2021 and a 2022 report by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights.
Relying on Article 5 § 1 (right to liberty and security), they alleged that their detention had been unlawful and/or arbitrary. Lastly, they complained that they had not had an effective procedure to complain of the conditions and the lawfulness of their detention, in breach of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) and Article 5 § 4 (right to have lawfulness of detention decided by a court) respectively.

Decision of the Court
Article 3
The general principles concerning conditions of detention including the detention of unaccompanied minor migrants had been set out in A.D.v. Malta.
The Court noted, in respect of all the applicants but J.B, that despite being presumed minors, they had been hosted with adults for around two months in the Ħal Far Initial Reception Centre (HIRC) with their detention arrangements only being altered once the Court had issued an interim measure to the Government.
The Court found that the information provided lacked enough detail to substantiate the applicants’ allegation of overcrowding in that centre. However, their remaining submissions were supported by the CPT 2021 report, which noted: “Some of the bathrooms had no doors and, ..., some of the showers and wash basins were blocked ... Many of the detained migrants underlined that they had no access [to] any purposeful activities, no television, no access to the telephone, and were not offered access to the single exercise yard. Migrants spent 24 hours per day locked [i]n their units with nothing to structure their days for months on end.” There was nothing to show that refurbishments or changes had been made since then. Moreover, nothing had been done to ensure that the applicants, as minors, received proper counselling and educational assistance from qualified
personnel mandated for that purpose. Their second period of detention in a place that was more suited to their age had barely improved the situation, judging from their undisputed accounts of harassment and their having been tricked into abandoning their appeal procedures.
Bearing those points in mind and, in particular, their age, the amount of time they had been detained for, their vulnerability as minors and the effects of detention on their mental health, the Court considered that the conditions of detention for the five unaccompanied minors had amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of Article 3 of the Convention.
The Court was not convinced that the conditions of detention in the HIRC, although regrettable, could be considered to have reached the required threshold for the purposes of Article 3 in respect of J.B. who, in the absence of such a claim had not been a presumed minor in the eyes of the authorities at the time, and was (prior to the findings of the psychological report of March 2023) not more vulnerable than any other adult held in HIRC at the time. Concerning his subsequent detention, in Safi Block A with minors, while the Court remained concerned as to its duration, there was not enough to find that the conditions complained of had reached the threshold of Article 3. Therefore, there had been no violation of Article 3 in his respect.
Article 13 in conjunction with Article 3
The Court had already found in previous cases against Malta that the constitutional redress proceedings suggested by the Government were not an effective remedy for the purposes of complaints of ongoing conditions of detention under Article 3. In the absence of any other remedy available to the applicants, the Court held that there had been a violation of Article 13 in conjunction with Article 3.
Article 5 § 1
The Court accepted that keeping migrants contained within the perimeters of a hotspot might be justified – when regulated by law and for a strictly necessary and limited period of time – while they were identified, registered and interviewed, with a view to possibly transferring them to other facilities once their status had been clarified. However, in this case, the measure applied to the applicants, which the Court found amounted to detention, appeared to have been standard practice applied by the authorities in a legal vacuum. They had not been told why, for how long, or on what legal basis they were being detained and had not had access to any legal safeguards throughout that period. As the period of detention between 18-30 November 2022 had been put in practice in a legal vacuum, it followed that it had not been “lawful” within the meaning of Article 5 § 1. There had therefore been a violation of that provision.
Once a detention order had been issued on 30 November 2022, the applicants had continued to be held at the same place and in the same conditions as before. However, the Court accepted that that period of detention had had a legal basis in domestic law and had been necessary to determine certain elements regarding their claim for international protection, in particular, their age. However, once the initial decision on their age had been delivered, it was unclear what age-related elements the applicants had been expected to provide during their appeal that warranted holding them further.
The Court reiterated that the need to detain children in an immigration context must be very carefully considered by the national authorities. It noted that the IAB had indiscriminately confirmed the lawfulness of their detention, despite a national regulation that provided that migrants who claimed to be minors should not be detained, except as a last resort, unless their claim was evidently untrue. Five of the six applicants had finally been found to be minors. The fact that it had taken the authorities nearly six months to finally determine their ages gave cause to doubt their good faith. At no stage had the authorities envisaged any alternative to detention. There was no sign of any such assessment having been made before the detention order had been issued on 30 November 2022, nor had any proper assessment been made during the review by the IAB in December 2022. The automatic reviews provided for by law had not taken place, denying the applicants any procedural safeguards, and the applicants’ requests for release from detention in April had not been answered.
The Court considered that their detention during this period had not been compliant with Article 5 § 1 and that there had therefore been a violation of that provision in respect of the five unaccompanied minors.
As concerns J.B., he had ultimately been found to be an adult and his conditions of detention had not been found to be in breach of Article 3. While the Court expressed reservations about the duration of the age-assessment procedures and the lack of procedural safeguards, it considered that his detention during this period had been compliant with Article 5 § 1. There had therefore been no violation of that provision in his respect.
Article 5 § 4
The applicants considered that the review of the detention order before the IAB had shown the remedy to be ineffective, in particular due to an apparent lack of independence and impartiality of its members who had close links to the executive. Moreover, the only review of their detention had been conducted via a mass hearing with one decision confirming the detention of around 47 individuals, rather than an individualised assessment for each person. No further automatic reviews, provided for by law, ensued.
The Court considered that the applicants’ doubts as to the independence of the IAB were legitimate, noting that the Government had failed to rebut their submissions concerning the lack of a proper procedure for the appointment of the IAB members and the absence of proper selection criteria based on merit. Nor had they indicated the existence of any guarantees against outside pressure. The Court noted that both the European Commission and the Venice Commission had expressed serious concerns about the functioning of similar tribunals. Moreover, the Court expressed doubts as to the scope of the review undertaken at the mass hearing and noted that five months without any automatic review in the circumstances pertaining to this case could not be considered compliant with Article 5 § 4.
Rule 39 of the Rules of Court
The applicants no longer being in detention, the Court lifted the interim measure that it had indicated to the Maltese Government in January 2023.
Article 46 (binding force and execution of judgments)
As the problems detected in this case might subsequently give rise to other well-founded applications, the Court considered that general measures at national level were called for.
It called on the Government to ensure that legislation was put in place for the Immigration Appeals Tribunal to conform with the requirements of independence and impartiality as regards the appointment of its members and their term of office, to ensure guarantees against outside pressure, and to be seen to be independent.
Moreover, since the Court had found yet another violation of Article 13, in conjunction with Article 3, a recurring situation despite the Court’s solicitations since Story and Others, it also called on the Government to put in place a remedy, effective both in law and in practice, to complain about the conditions of an ongoing detention."