Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/204636
20 Opinion maltatoday, SUNDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2013 Never mind passports. It's n T his week I thought long and hard about retiring from journalism altogether, and… Hang on, what was that noise? Sounded suspiciously like the simultaneous popping of around 400,000 champagne corks in the distance… (but hey! It could just as easily have been another flock of eagles flying at low altitude over a protected bird sanctuary. You never know). Anyway, sorry to disappoint you all, but I haven't actually taken any decision yet. So if I were you I'd keep those bottles of bubbly in the fridge just a short while longer. Still, after reading the appeals court judgment handed down to Daniel Holmes last Thursday, it became obvious to me that the real reason for this monumental injustice (apart from the nationality of the accused, to which I shall return shortly) was the fact that the media had taken an interest in this case to begin with. Not just our newspaper, but other media both locally and abroad: including a couple of regional newspapers in places like Cardiff and Bolton, from where Holmes Raphael Vassallo and his deceased 'partner in crime' Barry Lee (who committed suicide in prison in 2008) originally hailed. There was also a petition which attracted thousands of signatures from dozens of countries around the world… and last but not least, a letter by Daniel's father Mel, reproduced this week in the press, which highlighted a number of anomalies surrounding his son's case. It was clear as daylight that all this attention irked the learned judges of the appeals court – David Scicluna, Joseph Zammit McKeon and Abigail Lofaro – no end… to the extent that their irritation was duly noted in the last appeal hearing (Holmes's lawyer was silenced by Zammit Mckeon when he alluded to the petition in court). This was obvious even at the time; but what I did not expect (because part of me unreasonably retains a modicum of faith in human nature, in spite of everything) was that the same judges would allow that irritation to literally cloud their judgment. Yet the three judges of the court of criminal appeal came down like a ton of bricks on Daniel Holmes, not because he deserved to be buried under a landslide… but as a way of imparting a very unsubtle message to the same media which the judges felt had 'interfered' with their private little party. Their message? "Stay out of our business or others will get hurt". If this interpretation is correct – and I don't doubt it for a second: the entire ruling simply drips with this unshakable impression – then it means that I myself am partly responsible for the fate of a man who will now spend the next nine years in prison: the same prison where another man, charged with the same crime, hanged himself in 2008. These are not thoughts one takes lightly. OK, I didn't exactly throw up at the truly revolting idea… but to tell you the truth I came close. I felt a very real shot to my stomach: a genuine wave of nausea that seriously got me thinking about whether it is ever justifiable to expose others to the risk of injustice, on the pretext that 'one is doing one's job'. The sensation placed me in the quandary of not knowing what to do. Does one not flag an injustice because others may suffer more injustices as a result of the publicity? Or do you flag it all the same, for exactly the same reason? What I did do was send an apology to Daniel Holmes's family. And I must say it made a big difference to me that Daniel's father took the trouble to write back, rejecting the apology and insisting I had nothing to be sorry about for having written about his son's case. I am grateful for that because it did take a weight off my shoulders. But at the same time I cannot ignore the implications of the entire case: i.e., that the judiciary has grown so inhumane that they will destroy a man's life (and a woman's, and a baby's) just to apply pressure on the media to shut us up. And while I no longer feel responsible in the sense that I did something wrong, the incident also confirmed a previous suspicion that the Maltese law courts are, in fact, a spiteful, vindictive and monstrously unjust institution… form which the very last thing one can reasonably expect is justice. Add the fact that there is evidence that the same institution is also monstrously corrupt – at least three judges (two of whom were convicted, the other hanged himself last May) are understood to have taken bribes and/or exposed themselves to 'undue influence', in a naked bid to thwart justice to the benefit of criminals – and quite frankly the only conclusion to be reached is that Malta is simply not a safe place to be a journalist who reports on justice issues. In fact, I'd go a step further. Let's not forget that Malta is a also a country in which you can find yourself charged with drug possession even if you were never caught in possession of drugs. Malta is not a safe place to live, full stop. OK, enough with the selfrecrimination now and onto the business at hand. The problem with Thursday's ruling is not limited only to the obvious injustice inherent in the sentence… and I expect that will now be addressed by the European Court of Human Rights, which by the way is busy notching up a whole raft of cases in which our country has been found guilty of human rights infringements: mostly concerning the justice system. The problem with the sentence is also the message it sends out to society. I've already highlighted the message to the press – which is the equivalent of a hostage-taker pointing the gun at his victim and warning everyone to back off… but what about the message it sends out to the public at large? Let's try and put it into perspective. Some of you might recall the case of Noel Arrigo and Patrick Vella (two judges, one of them Chief Justice at the time when the incident occurred) who were tried and convicted for accepting a bribe to reduce the sentence of a drug trafficker by four years. As I write this, people are busy making online comparisons between the sentences in these two cases. They are quite right to be baffled: how can a man be given 10 years in jail for growing marijuana plants – when two senior judges got two and three years respectively for accepting a bribe by a drug trafficker (immediate contradiction too blatant to even bother explaining)… in the process, making a total mockery of the entire justice system, and demolishing its credibility with the wider public in a way that is probably irreversible? To put the question another way: which of these two crimes harmed society more? The one involving growing a plant that even the University of Harvard now thinks might be able to cure cancer? Or