A Welshman gets eleven years in Malta for growing cannabis

On 24 November 2011 a court in Malta sentenced Daniel Holmes, a 35-year-old from Wales, to eleven years in prison and a fine of over €23,000 for growing cannabis in his flat in Gozo. He said it was for himself. The case became the best-known example of how Malta’s drug law treated growers, and it drew many young Maltese into campaigning for reform.

A grower treated as a trafficker

Holmes was arrested in 2006 with his flatmate, Barry Lee, who later died by suicide in custody while awaiting sentence. Accounts of what police found differ: The Shift reported five plants, MaltaToday later wrote of five mature plants and 28 seedlings, and the appeal court spoke of 32 plants.

He was convicted of importing seeds without a licence, of cultivating cannabis in circumstances suggesting it was not for personal use, and of trafficking more than a kilogram. His defence said that weight counted the whole dried plant, not the usable drug. Four of the five charges carried a possible life sentence.

Date	Step
2006	Arrested in Gozo
24 November 2011	Sentenced to eleven years and fined over €23,000
26 October 2013	Protesters march for his release
31 October 2013	Appeal court confirms a term of about ten years
July 2015	Application to the European Court of Human Rights
13 September 2018	Released after about eight years in custody

Outcry

Within days nearly a thousand people signed a petition saying he did not deserve ten years for growing weed. George Grech, clinical director of the state addiction agency Sedqa, renewed his call for a debate on decriminalising possession: “Prison is not giving results.” Labour’s justice spokesman, Jose Herrera, said cannabis was “more or less harmless” and that sentences were inconsistent. The justice minister announced a drugs court.

The appeal failed on 31 October 2013. Judge David Scicluna said the punishment was “well within the parameters of the law, as the maximum was a life sentence”. The court saw the plants and equipment as a production line, not personal use, and noted that the sentence was harsher than the eight years the prosecution had asked for. His father called the ruling inhumane.

What followed

In 2015 Malta stopped prosecuting small possession and dropped mandatory prison for growing a single plant. Holmes’s lawyers took his case to Strasbourg the same year; it was still pending when he was released in September 2018. Reports said he expected to be deported and barred from Malta for five years.

When Malta legalised home growing in 2021, allowing four plants per household, one activist wrote that if the country became the first in Europe to regulate cannabis, “one quiet man from Wales may be the one to thank for it”.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}