The Nauru government will appeal against the decision to permanently stay the trial of the Nauru 19, saying the judge’s decision to halt the case was wrong and “needed to be corrected”.

“If this is not done the community at large will never truly know whether or not those involved in the riot at parliament broke the law,” a government spokesman said.

On Thursday, Australian judge Geoffrey Muecke, sitting as a judge of the Nauru supreme court, delivered a swingeing judgement permanently staying the trial of the so-called Nauru 19, charged over a political rally held at Nauru’s parliament in 2015.

The demonstrators, including a former president of Nauru, were some of hundreds protesting the banning of several parliamentarians from taking their seats in parliament for giving interviews to foreign media.

Muecke said the prosecution of the Nauru 19 was “a shameful affront to the rule of law” and that the Nauru 19 could not receive a fair trial in the country because the executive government had already decided they were guilty, and would do whatever it could, and spend whatever money it had, to convict and jail them.

“My conclusion is that the executive government of Nauru does not want these defendants to receive a fair trial,” Muecke wrote.

“… the executive government of Nauru wishes only that they, and each of them, be convicted and imprisoned for a long time, and that the government of Nauru is willing to expend whatever resources, including financial resources, as are required to achieve that aim.”

Justice Muecke found that the Nauru 19 had been “blacklisted” by the government, and that the Australian lawyers who defended them pro bono had been abused, racially vilified and threatened. He accused the justice minister, David Adeang – who has unilaterally removed three magistrates and judges for making decisions the government did not agree with – of corrupting the justice system he was sworn to uphold.

“In my judgment, the findings and conclusions to which I have just referred constitute a shameful affront by the minister for justice to the rule of law in Nauru, which he professes to operate for and give protection to the citizens of the country.”

But a spokesman for the Nauruan government said Muecke’s decision was wrong in law and needed to be corrected by an appeal.

“These are important matters which must be decided before a court of law in our country. The effect of this decision is that the evidence against the defendants cannot be brought to light.”

Once the government lodges its appeal, the case will go before the newly-constituted Nauru court of appeal, which this year replaced the Australian high court as the apex appellate court in the Nauru justice system.