Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/818637
maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 3 MAY 2017 News Election fever hits the roads Spending hours in traffic will be less tedious for motorists in the next five weeks as the two major political parties have plastered their banners and billboards in every available space. The photo taken by MaltaToday's photographer James Bianchi shows a Labour billboard and PN banners at the Msida skate park. Man in jail for four murders could be released on parole following Constitutional Court decision MATTHEW AGIUS A man who has spent the past 25 years behind bars for brutally murdering four men in 1988, could be released on parole if a Parole Board deems him to have been sufficiently rehabilitated, a court has ruled. Tunisian Ben Ali Wahid Ben Hassine had been condemned to life imprisonment in Febru- ary 1992 for the quadruple mur- der of two taxi drivers and two men, one British and the other French, in an 18-day killing spree that shocked the island. The criminal court had recom- mended that Ben Hassine serve a minimum of 22 years behind bars. Ben Ali Wahid Ben Hassine had instilled terror in the Mal- tese Islands in February 1988, when he carried out four cal- lous and brutal murder-robber- ies over an 18-day period. The murders were so gruesome that some people were unwilling to leave their homes at the time. Hassine's murders were par- ticularly gruesome. His third victim was shot in the head and had his face smashed in with a rock in an attempt to make rec- ognition of him impossible, after Hassine had failed at decapitat- ing the body. The fourth and fi- nal victim was also a taxi driver who was killed by a gunshot to the head. The murder investigation had led to the arrest of a number of Tunisian men, among them Mohsen Mosbah Bin Brahim and Ben Ali Wahid Ben Hass- ine. Both men were 26 years old at the time. The two Tunisians were both handed life sentences in 1992, after pleading guilty to avoid a trial by jury. Ben Ali Wahid Ben Hassine, had filed a human rights action in October 2014 arguing that because life sentences were not subject to revision in Malta, his fundamental human rights had been breached. In a judgment delivered last November, a court of appeal had given the legislator four months in which to provide a mechanism by which a life sentence could be revised or reduced. Making ref- erence to EU case law, the court had declared that the absence of such a mechanism constituted a violation of the right to protec- tion against inhuman treatment under article 36 of the Constitu- tion and the European Conven- tion on Human Rights. After those four months lapsed and with no remedy in sight, Ben Hassine had filed another appli- cation at the Court of Appeal, stating that no remedy had yet been provided by Parliament. The Attorney General had ar- gued that amendments to the Reparative Justice Act were still being discussed in Parliament and that the legislative process had to be allowed to run its course. In its decision on Friday, 28 April, the Constitutional Court, presided by Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri and by judges Gian- nino Caruana Demajo and Noel Cuschieri, noted that the pro- posed amendments did not sat- isfy the criteria for the revision or reduction of life sentences or envisage any possible reduc- tion of life sentences, but rather provided for the introduction of parole in such cases. Parole, said the court, means "release from prison under certain established conditions," but the issue which should have been addressed by the Reparative Justice Act was whether or not a reduc- tion in punishment should ap- ply – something that the Parole Board will not have the power to do, even if the amendments are made law. Therefore, in view of the fact that the plaintiff had already served 25 years in prison for his life sentence, the court "with the aim that the violation of Article 36 of the Constitution and Arti- cle 3 of the European Conven- tion, orders that within a month from today, the plaintiff appear before the Parole Board."