Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/767061
9 maltatoday, SATURDAY, 24 DECEMBER 2016 2016: Looking back The woman's estranged husband, Andrew Mangion, was accused of the crime. In a similar case, 41 year-old mother of two Caroline Magri was fatally stabbed at Ta' Giorni in October. Her estranged Gha- naian partner, Djibril Ganiou, was subse- quently charged with her murder. Also in October, police are understood to have questioned a middle-aged Serbian woman in connection with the deaths, eight months apart, of two elderly English- men, both of whom died at her apartment. 2016 Extraditions The extraditions of five international fu- gitives, arrested in Malta, drew an interna- tional spotlight on the island this year. February saw the courts uphold a request for the extradition of librarian Kajetan Poznanski, who was wanted in his native Poland in connection with the gruesome murder of his female Italian teacher whose charred, decapitated body was discovered in a bag inside his apartment. Lithuania's request for the extradition of Angelo Spiteri to face fraud charges led to a landmark Constitutional ruling in June, granting him bail whilst extradition proceedings were still ongoing. An Italian request for the extradition of mafia in- former-turned-fugitive Donatella Concas was upheld in November. Her subsequent appeal was given short shrift by the courts. As the year came to a close, news of the arrest in Malta of Miami-based Chilean businessman Alberto Chang-Rajii, want- ed in Chile on charges of running a $100 million pyramid scheme, caused ripples across the Atlantic. Chang-Rajii filed Con- stitutional proceedings in late December, claiming court procedures were preventing him from paying his bail deposit. Juries Three trials by jury of note took place this year, of which only one ended with a con- viction. In March, former policeman Car- mel Cutajar was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for attempted homicide, having shot his wife in the chest in 2012, causing a non-fatal wound. The jury found Cutajar guilty of the charge, however with diminished responsibility after hearing the man's wife admit to depriving him of ac- cess to his children whilst carrying on an extramarital affair. In May, former barman Godfrey Gambin, and Libyan national Adel Mohammed Bab- ani, were declared not guilty by seven votes to two of involvement in a 2010 criminal operation in which a speedboat, laden with 20kg of cannabis sailed into Xemxija. The first day of the trial saw the first witness, former Assistant Commissioner of Police Neil Harrison reveal that the men had been arrested as a result of a controlled delivery and that police had been liaising with one of the men on the speedboat. This pivotal detail had not been mentioned in the six years since the men had been arrested, a fact that was exploited to the fullest extent by the defence. A unanimous not guilty verdict was reached in November's trial of a man ac- cused of murdering an employee at an Ital- ian restaurant in St Julian's in January 1993. The man was found not guilty of wilful homicide by a unanimous verdict and not guilty of the other six heads of indictment: theft aggravated by violence, means, time and value, detaining a person against their will, possession of an unlicensed firearm and carrying a loaded weapon by 7 votes to 2. The verdict was reached after five hours of deliberation on the 16th day of the trial. Crimes by foreigners Although the official statistics for 2016 are not yet available, last year's upward trend of small-scale bag snatching thefts, shoplifting and muggings appears to have continued, from the considerable number of arraignments – of mostly foreign nation- als, the majority from Eastern Europe – for the petty crimes. On a more serious note, the risk of for- eign conflicts being "imported" to Malta was flagged as early as February by Mag- istrate Joseph Mifsud, as he presided the arraignment of a Libyan national accused of stabbing another Libyan in an incident prompted by the sectarian divisions in the failed North African state. Homelessness factor frequently raised in court Probably the most notable, and to some extent worrying, crime-related statistic this year has seen is the mushrooming home- less population. At least 15 of the people arraigned before the court this year told the court that they were homeless, a state- ment more often than not, confirmed by the arraigning police inspector. The discovery of the body of a homeless Somali man under the Marsa bridge earlier this month drew the spotlight of public at- tention to the plight of homeless African refugees, but homelessness is not an afflic- tion exclusive to refugees – an increasing number of Maltese citizens, mostly men, often with family and/or drug problems, appear to be sleeping rough or in their cars. U21 Match-fixing scandal 2016 was something of an annus horri- bilis for Maltese football, with the Maltese international Under 21 football team find- ing itself at the centre of a match-fixing investigation linked to a foreign betting syndicate. Curiosity corner Oddball cases and characters are three a penny in court. Occasionally, however, one or two outlandish crimes will push those already-stretched boundaries of oddball- ness, crossing the frontier into the murky realm of "I honestly don't know what is ap- propriate to say here." A number of cases from 2016 immediate- ly come to mind, although there are sure to be others. October's peeping-tom sports-coach- who-also-runs-a-childcare-centre story unleashed a torrent of public outrage at the court's decision to ban the publica- tion of the name of a man who admitted to installing hidden cameras in a female volleyball team's changing room. The man was handed a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years. The absence of a consistent approach by the courts to such cases was evident when that arraignment was followed, a month later, by the case of the Naked Nigerian Onanist, whose identity did not enjoy such protection. The third case in the tragic minefield of the comic-yet-ghastly, also in November, was the case of a man reported to the po- lice by his new bride for engaging in sexual activities with a 14 year-old relative of hers. The court was told that the teen had can- didly stated that she was a willing partici- pant. More serious was another November ar- raignment, of a 22 year-old woman charged with falsely accusing a bus driver of raping her in his off-duty vehicle. The woman was arrested after police said CCTV from inside the bus showed the encounter to be consensual. A dishonourable mention goes to last June's disturbing case of a 60-year-old man who was accused of bringing prostitutes home to share with his seven-year-old son "to prevent him from growing up to be gay" and of whipping the boy with electrical cord when he was unable to participate. And although 2016 wasn't all bad – the police succeeded in smashing a local pae- dophile ring, for example – few will be sor- ry to see the back of it. So roll on 2017, you can't be much worse than your older brother... right? Clockwise, left to right: In January, Martin Cachia, 56, was killed when a bomb destroyed the car he was driving; 41 year-old mother of two Caroline Magri was fatally stabbed at Ta' Giorni in October. Her estranged Ghanaian partner, Djibril Ganio (centre), was subsequently charged with her murder; Miami-based Chilean businessman Alberto Chang-Rajii, wanted in Chile on charges of running a $100 million pyramid scheme, caused ripples across the Atlantic; librarian Kajetan Poznanski, who was wanted in his native Poland in connection with the gruesome murder of his female Italian teacher whose charred, decapitated body was discovered in a bag inside his apartment.