Three men resident at the Hal Far open centre have been charged with assaulting two police officers and a support worker.
The men are Abdalla Muhammed Abdalla, 20, from Chad, a 16-year-old from Sudan, and a 17-year-old from Nigeria. The names of the minors cannot be mentioned by court order.
The three were prevented from entering the open centre on Sunday night after returning back drunk. They caused mayhem and police had to be called in.
The incident led to the violent riot that ended up with five cars being burnt, stones pelted at support workers and offices ransacked.
The three were the first to be charged in court on Tuesday in front of Magistrate Doreen Clarke. The police are expected to charge around 100 migrants who were involved in the riot.
The migrants are being taken to court in groups of around 30, amid heavy police presence.
The three men pleaded not guilty to the charges. The court remanded them in custody.
Inspector Melvyn Camilleri prosecuted and legal aid lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace appeared for the three men.
Bail was requested but opposed by the prosecution as the men had just arrived in Malta.
Camilleri argued they had no address other than the open centre. There is no structure that can cater for them.
The defence insisted that in the same way they were found and arraigned, they can be found again.
“The centre today is now a completely open centre, because the office is not functioning, not even their records can be found,” the inspector responded.
The court denied bail, saying they could not provide the required guarantees at law.
Handcuffed to each other in threes, the first group sat in Hall 22 of the law courts waiting for the interpreters to be found.
When proceedings finally began at around 1:45pm, Inspectors Roderick Attard, Eman Hayman and Oriana Spiteri read out the charges against the first tranche of 20 migrants.
These individuals, from Somalia, Senegal, Guinea, Gambia, Eritrea, Nigeria, Chad and Sudan, entered their pleas to charges of disobeying lawful orders and “wilfully disturbing the public good order and peace.”
14 entered guilty pleas, the other 6 pleaded not guilty and requested bail. The 14 who pleaded guilty were sentenced to 6 weeks imprisonment.
This was objected to by the prosecution, which said it feared further crimes would be committed.
Micallef Stafrace argued that the offences with which the accused were being charged were contraventions.
The court, in view of the circumstances which led to the arraignment and the fact that the accsued had no fixed address or ties to Malta, denied bail.