Human rights ‘concerns’ over father’s prison term

The imprisonment of a man who did not pay maintenance to his ex-wife because he was unemployed raises human rights concerns, according to legal experts in the field. Although the law allows the imprisonment of people who fail to obey a court ruling, such as a maintenance order, according to case law this did not apply when the person could not afford court-imposed payments, explained Giovanni Bonello, a former judge within the European Court of Human Rights. “The imprisonment of a person who is not in a financial position to pay a debt can never serve ‘to secure the fulfilment of an obligation’, but to punish and degrade the debtor – which the (European) Convention simply does not countenance,” Dr Bonello said. The Sunday Times reported the story of David Muscat, a 52-year-old father of three who has been jailed for a month for not paying maintenance for four months, during which time he was unemployed. The newspaper saw documents issued by the Employment and Training Corporation showing he had been made redundant. He has since found a job. Mr Muscat said he did not have the money to appeal the jail term and to date he was waiting for the police to knock at his...