NAURU – A Nauruan magistrate has criticised the country’s prosecutors over their handling of a case brought against a refugee on the island who threatened to set fire to himself and his family.

In a scathing rebuke the magistrate said the legal team was “ignorant of its prosecutorial duty”.

A series of decisions from the district court of Nauru have recently been published online, giving a rare glimpse into the Nauruan justice system – which the Australian government and its immigration department have consistently maintained is robust and capable of handling complex matters.

These statements have been repeated following the Guardian’s publication of the Nauru files, which revealed the devastating trauma and abuse inflicted on children held by Australia in offshore detention.

But the court decisions filed on the Pacific Legal Institute’s website show that questions linger over the capacity of the Nauruan police and prosecutors.

In one case the Nauruan police charged an asylum seeker for threatening to kill himself and his family. The man had made a disclosure of self-harm and threatened to set fire to himself and his family.

Nauru subsequently removed attempted suicide from its criminal code, in April 2016, but the man was charged before this occurred – and a string of cases show that self-harm threats and attempts are still being prosecuted using the alternate offence of threatening to kill and arson.

The man’s case proceeded to hearing in June 2016. The magistrate queried the prosecution’s gathering of statements from key witnesses to the incident, who were all staff contracted by Australia to provide refugee settlement services.

One of the case workers employed by Connect Settlement Services gave a statement but then refused to sign it. The magistrate questioned why the prosecution had failed to appropriately take statements and explain this to the court.

“Does this court not need an explanation coming from the prosecution to enable this court to strike a balance in the exercise of its discretion on whether or not to grant bail to the defendant?” she wrote.

“I find this aspect of the prosecution submission, so strange and ignorant of its prosecutorial duty to assist the court.”

The police and magistrate Emma Garo eventually ruled that the prosecution had failed to make out their case.

“The end result is there is no evidence before this court to show the defendant has a case to answer,” she wrote. “The charge against the defendant is dismissed and the defendant is acquitted.”

Other decisions raise further concerns about the conduct of the Nauruan prosecutors.

In another case where a case was brought against an asylum seeker for sabotage, prosecutors and police failed to take statements from an unnamed Filipino employee relevant to the case. Garo wrote that there was “no explanation” from prosecutors about why they failed to do so.

In another case, not related to any of the asylum seekers or refugees held in Australia’s care, Garo criticised police for failing to execute an arrest warrant authorised for a case for a period of nine months.

“No explanation has been given to the court as to why there has been a delay in executing the bench warrants to have the defendant arrested and brought before the court,” she wrote.

“In the absence of an explanation for the delay in executing the bench warrant, the delay must be deemed to be unreasonable and taken in favour of the defendant to mitigate in favour of a reduction in sentence.”

And in a further case relating to an assault prosecution, Nauruan officers took a witness statement that was provided in Nauruan and translated it into English without taking any original recording.

Garo wrote that the situation left the police statements “tainted with such an unfairness” that they were inadmissible to the court.

“In this case we have the English translation as translated by the police without the Nauruan version being actually recorded.

“There is nothing to compare or even analyse whether the translations as are recorded are an accurate translation of what has been asked and answered in Nauruan. The absence of the Nauruan version of the interview, cannot take the prosecution case any further.”

The Nauruan government has been contacted for comment about the handling of the cases.

- Guardian