The applicant, a Liberian national, arrived in Malta on 24 November 2021. He was rescued at sea and taken to hospital, where he first provided information that he was a minor (fifteen years old) and that he had arrived unaccompanied. As COVID-19 pandemic measures were in place, he was placed under quarantine. On 29 November, he was transferred to the Ħal Far detention centre (also known as “China House”), which hosts adult migrants, where he continued his quarantine. Among other elements, the applicant claimed that he had not been given the opportunity to call his relatives and had not received clothing adequate for the climate. On 26 December, he was “medically cleared”. Although no detention order in his regard was produced, he remained in detention, first at Ħal Far until the end of 2021, and then at the Ħal Safi detention centre until 21 January 2022, in conditions he considered even worse. He expressed his wish to apply for asylum in Malta. On 21 January, he requested the Court of Magistrates to declare his detention unlawful and to order his release. The request was rejected on the basis that it had been filed against the Commissioner of Police as Principal Immigration Officer, who, it emerged, had issued no detention order against the applicant. On the same day, he was released from detention. The applicant subsequently initiated proceedings before the First Hall Civil Court (Constitutional Jurisdiction), challenging the lawfulness of his detention and the conditions in which he had been held, and seeking appropriate remedy.

The First Hall Civil Court upheld the applicant’s claim that he had been deprived of his liberty in an arbitrary and illegal manner, in breach of Article 6 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU Charter), Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and Article 34 of the Constitution of Malta. The applicant argued that his detention did not fall under any of the permissible grounds for detention of asylum applicants laid down in Article 8 of the recast Reception Conditions Directive (recast RCD). He further argued that the absence of a proper detention order prevented him from challenging the legality of his detention, contrary to Article 5(4) of the ECHR. The First Hall Civil Court confirmed that no lawful detention order was produced. It also specified that the quarantine order, covering the initial period of his detention, was a mere movement-restriction measure, and its implementation through closed detention did not fall within the exhaustively listed grounds that may justify detention under Article 5(1) of the ECHR and Article 34(1) of the Constitution, therefore breaching Article 1, Article 6, and Article 24 of the EU Charter.

The court further upheld the applicant’s claim that, as an unaccompanied minor, the right to his best interests was violated, in breach of Article 24 of the EU Charter. The applicant relied on Article 11 of the recast RCD, which provides that minors shall be detained only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest time, that the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration, that unaccompanied minors shall be detained only in exceptional circumstances, and that, where detained, they must be accommodated separately from adults. The applicant also invoked the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law stressing that additional safeguards against arbitrary detention apply to children (Thimothawes v Belgium, No 39061/11, 18 September 2017; Abdi Mahamud (Somalia) v. Malta, No 56796/13, 3 August 2016) and that delays or failures in vulnerability assessment can cast doubt on the authorities’ good faith (Abdullahi Elmi and Aweys Abubakar (Somalia) v. Malta, No 25794/13 and No 28151/13, 22 February 2017; Abdi Mahamud (Somalia) v. Malta, No 56796/13, 3 August 2016). The First Hall Civil Court held that the authorities failed to treat the applicant as a minor pending the age assessment, and that the child-protection mechanism under domestic law (Article 21 of the Chapter 602) was not followed in a timely manner, leaving the applicant without a legal guardian to represent his interests for a prolonged period.

The court also upheld the applicant’s claim that the detention conditions in Ħal Far and later Ħal Safi amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of Article 1 and Article 4 of the EU Charter, Article 3 of the ECHR, and Article 36 of the Constitution. The court held that the applicant’s description of the conditions – considered that he was a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old boy, alone in a foreign country, and without family – clearly indicated that he was not kept in an appropriate and dignified environment with the safeguards required for a particularly vulnerable person. In this regard, the court invoked the principles expressed by ECtHR in A.D. v Malta (No 12427/22, 17 January 2024) including that reception conditions for children seeking asylum must not create stress and anxiety with particularly traumatic consequences, otherwise, they would attain the threshold prohibited under Article 3 of the ECHR. Finally, the First Hall Civil Court adopted the conclusion of ECtHR in J.B. and Others v Malta (No 1766/23, 22 January 2025) which ruled that the applicants’ detention conditions in Malta amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of Article 3 of the ECHR.

In conclusion, the First Hall Civil Court upheld the applicant’s claims that he had been deprived of his liberty in an arbitrary and illegal manner, that his best interests as a child had been violated, and that the detention conditions to which he had been subjected in Malta amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of the EU Charter, the ECHR, and the Constitution. The court awarded non-pecuniary damages in the amount of 5,000 EUR.