Three men have died in custody in a few weeks, and the government thinks it’s business as usual

WARNING: THIS POST INCLUDES A VIDEO THAT IS NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN.

The death of a man in custody is a horrible thing, and is generally taken very seriously indeed. This is not only because custody is exactly what it says it is, and the police are obliged to ensure that vulnerable people do not kill themselves. It’s also because any death in custody is, or should be, treated as possible murder.

People with drug problems are more likely to kill themselves in custody because of despair. But they are also more likely to be murdered by those who think they will squeal.

All three men who died in custody in the last few weeks were being held on drug-related issues.

Twenty-four years ago, when I had just begun work on the staff at a brand-new newspaper called The Malta Independent, a young man was found dead in police custody. They said he died of an overdose or medical complications caused by drug use. Shortly afterwards, a man came to see me at the office. He was polite, well spoken and not at all hysterical or irrational. It turned out he was the dead man’s older brother, and he was convinced his younger brother had been murdered. It wasn’t the conviction of a conspiracy theorist or somebody looking for somebody else to blame in his grief and clutching at straws. It was absolute, calm conviction.

I was too young and inexperienced to know what to do about the story, and I told him that I couldn’t handle it. His disappointment in me was clear on his face, and I have regretted it since. My regret grew when, around five years later, a friend who belonged to a Christian group spoke to me in general terms about the sort of people who can turn up to their meetings. She mentioned this dead man by name, thinking that I had no idea who she was talking about, and telling me that some months before he died he had come to a meeting of their group and spoken about how afraid he was, that there were people who wanted to kill him.

I somehow get the idea that this is exactly what the Opposition is getting at when it presses home the point that three people with drug problems dying in police custody in a few weeks is something to be taken very seriously. I wish they would speak plainly and raise public awareness about the fact that murders in police custody (the world over, even in democratic countries) can be dressed up as suicide. Who is there to contradict the police?

One of the most disturbing scenes in the brilliant British film Starred Up (released in 2013) demonstrates in hideous detail how the prison chief and guards try to get rid of a troublesome young prisoner by hanging him in his cell and making it look like suicide. They are caught in the act by the prisoner’s father, who is also a prisoner, and stopped just in time, but not before the prison chief and guards try to beat him off until their victim dies.

It was portrayed as a real risk in the film precisely because it is a real risk, in Britain and everywhere else, where the vulnerability of prisoners to their guards is a proper issue.