Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1248303
7 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 MAY 2020 OPINION WAS Neville Gafà Joseph Mus- cat's rogue secret agent, in- volving himself in secret "op- erations" regarding migrants leaving Libya without the offi- cial blessing of Malta but with the full cognizance of the then Prime Minister? So it seems. It is not known whether Gafà had contacts in Libya before he was appointed as some type of consultant with the then-Prime Minister and entrusted to coor- dinate the issue of medical visas for Libyans needing medical at- tention provided in Malta. Al- legations of wrongdoing in this capacity were never cleared up. With the situation being what it has been in Libya for the last few years, someone asking for money in return of medical vi- sas would not surprise anyone. Taking the money and failing to provide the visa would then be just a collateral. To be sure, funny business with regards to the issuing of visas for Libyans was not something that started to happen after Muscat assumed power in 2013. The same sort of thing was also hap- pening under the previous PN administration. Again, no one was ever ac- cused of anything in this regard. Except for Neville Gafà, who was accused of doing just that – not by the Maltese police but by Ivan Grech Mintoff, leader of Alleanza Bidla, a very small po- litical party that that has never made any significant gains in elections or in opinion polls. In June 2018, during the hear- ings of a libel case Gafà had instituted against the Malta Independent, Grech Mintoff submitted in court, transcripts and a hefty document detail- ing how the alleged racket was conducted, to back his claims of high-level corruption. The document contained assertions and testimony on the alleged illegal sale of Schengen visas at the Maltese consulate in Tripoli and on the issuance of Human- itarian Medical Visas by Nev- ille Gafà, then an official of the Prime Minister's office. The documents also claimed that there were indications that medical visas, which should have been issued for free, were instead sold with Gafà allegedly charging €3,000 per medical vi- sa. The documents also claimed that five Libyans were willing to testify that Gafà had asked them for money in exchange for visas, but the named witness had not been contacted by the police de- spite their claims. According to Grech Mintoff, Gafà – who denied all the alle- gations – had even visited Lib- ya to attempt to persuade these witnesses not to testify against him. The documents Grech Mintoff submitted in court can be accessed on the Alleanza Bid- la website. The health minister and the then-foreign minister denied that Gafà was employed in their ministries but somehow or oth- er, Neville Gafà weathered the storm, presumably being pro- tected by none other than Jo- seph Muscat. With the end of Joseph Mus- cat, Gafà reportedly found him- self out of the power loop. Suddenly, we now find that Gafà was involved in a recent secret – but unofficial – oper- ation to stop African migrants coming from Libya and ending up in Malta. Testifying in a magisterial in- quiry made at the behest of the NGO Repubblika, Gafà recently claimed that in the past he had 'coordinated' the pushback of migrant boats. This more recent operation involved a private- ly-owned Maltese boat but no official AFM vessel. The govern- ment – now led by Robert Ab- ela – denied that Gafà did this on behalf of the Maltese gov- ernment, although it admitted it had asked Gafà for 'help' in view of his Libyan contacts. It also felt it had to point out that he was not paid for this operation. Again, the foreign minister was apparently unaware of the OPM's involvement in this op- eration. In a clear reference to the new foreign minister Evarist Bartolo, Gafà said it was point- less to rant on Facebook each morning. Gafà was then contacted by Illum newspaper and asked to explain exactly his role in this latest operation. He again re- iterated that he was engaged by the OPM to co-ordinate the operation directly with Libya's interior ministry and the Libyan coastguard. Testifying in the public inquiry into Daphne Caruana Galizia's assassination, Gafà had claimed that he had 'stopped' thousands of migrants from arriving in Malta; and in Illum he boasted that the problem can only be solved in the way 'they' used to solve it – meaning when Mus- cat was the PM – when, as he claimed, 'they' kept the situation under control. This was no longer happen- ing under Robert Abela, Gafà claimed, and since January the situation was no longer kept un- der control, meaning the co-or- dination with Libyan authorities has dissipated. Gafà continued to 'explain' that this 'co-ordina- tion' was not a pushback since it involved migrant boats being stopped from entering into the search and rescue (SAR) area for which Malta is responsible. So the game was intercepting migrant boats by private Mal- tese vessels or official Libyan vessels, before the migrant boats entered Malta's SAR area! That was how Muscat played the double game – by exercising what was in effect a pushback before migrant boats entered Malta's SAR area, and playing the innocent virgin when some did. Could this be one of the rea- sons why the EU is now ignoring 'little' Malta's predicament? Accidental death A man died on Friday night last week following an incident at his residence in Żabbar dur- ing which the police used a stun gun to contain him. It seems that after a stand-off lasting several hours, the po- lice convinced the man to come out of his house, but he again became aggressive towards a doctor – who had been asked to come from the Paola Health Centre – and went back upstairs and moved towards a window. Police from the Rapid Inter- vention Unit used a stun gun to stop the man while the doc- tor administered an injection to calm him down. Knocked unconscious, he was then given medical assistance in an ambu- lance and around 11pm, he was escorted by the police to Mater Dei Hospital. Shortly afterwards, he was pro- nounced dead. Frankly, these are the sort of circumstances that lead me to suspect that there was an obvi- ous over-reaction to the man's tantrum and that his death could have been avoided. The press, however, treated it as yet another run of the mill in- cident. Michael Falzon The Neville Gafà affair micfal45@gmail.com Was Neville Gafà Joseph Muscat's rogue secret agent, involving himself in secret "operations" regarding migrants leaving Libya without the official blessing of Malta but with the full cognizance of the then Prime Minister?