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6 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 28 JUNE 2026 FEATURE The Zeppi l-Hafi story: A failed murder Joseph Fenech, known as Żeppi l-Ħafi, gained notoriety in the 1990s, even getting a book written about him revisits the story in the wake of Fenech's death earlier this month JOSEPH Fenech could be any other person, who passed away at the age of 71. Mention the nickname Żeppi l-Ħafi, and the name takes on a different mean- ing, at least for those old enough to have experienced politics in the 1990s and early 2000s. Fenech's name will forever be intertwined with the 1994 attempted murder of Richard Cachia Caruana, then Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Ad- ami's chief of staff, and the controversial presidential pardon he was given to tell all. Fenech, who was Fenech Adami's bodyguard in the politically turbulent 1980s, lived in St Julian's. He died on Friday 19 June 2026, tak- ing all his secrets with him to the grave. But understanding how Fenech's notoriety came to be, requires a short dive into the political backdrop of the 1990s. Prosperity and drugs The Fenech Adami admin- istration had won the 1992 election comfortably—a 13,000-vote victory, which was unheard of since inde- pendence—and was riding high on a wave of enthusiasm and newfound market liber- alism. It was the second consec- utive victory after the watershed moment in 1987 when the PN ended 15 years of Labour rule. The 1992 PN election campaign slogan captured the country's sentiment in just two words: Ed- die fiduċja (Eddie is trust). It sig- nalled normality and prosperity. But by 1994, the Fenech Adami administration had started to display signs of arrogance, insti- tutional decay and an inability to address a growing drug overdose problem. In December 1993, the com- mander of the Armed Forces of Malta, Brigadier Maurice Calleja, had to resign after his daughter was arrested by the police in connection with drug trafficking. She told police her brother Meinrad Calleja had hand- ed her the drugs at the family home for her to pass on to Joseph Fenech. The briga- dier's resignation would later serve as the backdrop for the prosecu- tion's case in the Cachia Caruana attempted mur- der trials. M e a n w h i l e , the Labour Par- ty in Opposition had a young new leader, Alfred Sant, who was hammering the Nationalist gov- ernment for what he described as its "friends of friends" network. Sant painted a sordid picture of govern- ment—one mired in corrup- tion where the privileged "drug barons" did as they pleased. It was, however, the introduc- tion of the hugely unpopular VAT in 1995 by a Nationalist administration that was hop- ing for early EU accession, that eventually gave Sant his trump card to victory in the 1996 gen- eral election. In one legislature, the Labour leader managed to overturn a 13,000-vote deficit into a 7,000-vote surplus. A knifing in Mdina Joseph Fenech's notorious story—at least the tale every- one got to know him for—starts on 18 December 1994, just two years into the Nationalist Par- ty's second legislature. On that day, in the dead of night, just after parking his car outside his Mdina home, Rich- ard Cachia Caruana was knifed and left for dead. The knife was millimetres away from a main artery leading to the heart. The victim resisted, the knife broke and a neighbour, Nicholas Jensen, who witnessed the inci- dent, started shouting. Cachia Caruana survived the ordeal. Intelligent, a loyal aide, an enforcer and the bane of minis- ters who slacked or messed up, Cachia Caruana was Fenech Adami's feared righthand man. To his detractors, Cachia Caru- ana was the schemer behind the face of power, who could pull the strings in sections of the friendly media to target the PN's critics. He remained an important cog in the post-1998 Fenech Adami administrations, serv- ing as the main negotiator for EU membership and later be- ing appointed as Malta's per- manent representative to the EU after Malta joined the EU in 2004. But back to 1994 and the at- tempt on Cachia Caruana's life was considered a direct hit at the heart of government. It personally affected the prime minister. The attempted mur- der shocked the nation. It was a crime targeting one of the most powerful people in Fenech Ad- ami's kitchen Cabinet. It was nothing like anything Malta had witnessed until then. Confession under a bridge The murder took two years to have people prosecuted for the crime and this was only possi- ble after Joseph Fenech decided to confess his involvement di- rectly to Fenech Adami. Fenech Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami (centre) at the signing of the EU accession treaty in April (right) and then Foreign Minister Joe Borg Zeppi l-Hafi (above) claimed Meinrad Calleja had badgered him to kill Richard Cachia Caruana. Joseph Fenech, instead got two other men to carry out the hit and denied being at Mdina on the night of the crime The book penned by Glenn Bedingfield and published by SKS in 1999 about the Joseph Fenech pardon and his connection to Eddie Fenech Adami, which led the then prime minister to file criminal libel proceedings against the author