Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/893950
maltatoday SUNDAY 29 OCTOBER 2017 Interview 14 The crime that was committed on October 16, in which Malta's best- known investigative journalist was killed by a car-bomb as she was leaving her home in Bidnija, elicited a nationwide outpour of grief, shock and outrage. As both a historian and an academic who has extensively researched the history of the Maltese press... how do you assess the impact on our collective psyche as a nation? Would you regard this murder as a 'historical event', comparable to other vicissitudes of the past? Yes I would. If you look at the case of 1929, for instance: when Gianni Miller shot at Prime Min- ister Strickland as he entered the courthouse... that made a tremen- dous impact at the time. Pages upon pages in the Daily Malta Chronicle were dedicated to it. It was some- thing which shocked the country, at a time when political tensions were running high. There was a problem with the Church; problems with the Governor, Du Cane. There was the possibility of an early election... but eventually, there was no election at all. The Constitution was suspended shortly afterwards... On that occasion, however, the assassination failed... Yes: it was a failed assassination attempt on the Prime Minister. Not only did Miller fail to kill him, but he didn't even hit his target. It was more of a gesture, I think, than a re- ally motivated, planned murder at- tempt... and it was carried out by a one-armed bandit. Literally: he had one arm. He was a Nationalist fa- natic: a bit of a vagrant, who would sleep at the PN kazin in Senglea. And he had already been in trouble with the law. In fact he had been jailed after the Sette Giugno... and he was jailed again – 15 years with hard labour – for shooting at Strick- land. But this case is not quite the same. We knew who Gianni Miller was. He was recognisable, and com- mitted the crime in broad daylight. He wasn't hiding... he might have been an assassin, but he wasn't a coward. And he got his just desserts. 15 years with hard labour is no joke. The worrying thing about this case is that it was all planned out in min- ute detail... that makes it quite un- like previous cases. Daphne's murder has also been described (both locally and overseas) as a 'political assassination'. Do you share that view? It depends what you mean by 'po- litical'. So many things are 'politi- cal'... smuggling fuel from Libya to Sicily is 'political': not in the sense of a Maltese general election; but 'political' in the sense of organising a strategy to make millions of euros out of contraband. This was a man- dated murder. Now, the question is whether it was mandated by some Libyan militia leader, or some local gangster. You seem to be assuming that the Libya-Italy fuel smuggling lead, currently being followed by investigators, is in fact the correct hypothesis... It's my assumption. Of course, it could be something else. Daphne criticised everyone... and she didn't hold back her punches. And we also have this new phenomenon called 'blogs': which didn't exist before. Before, you wrote in the newspaper. Or gave a speech. And you could risk being interdicted by the Church... or having your newspaper shut down, as happened to one of the very first Maltese newspapers in 1838. The editor was a priest who was out of favour with the Catholic hierarchy. We've had many instances of that: in 1930, 1961. But this is something different. There isn't any political/ religious turmoil at the moment. So it's clearly about something else... Could it have something to do with the way Malta has changed since the times you allude to? You mention blogs... the Internet, social media... but Malta is now globalised in other ways. Our status as an EU member State, as well as our taxation regime, has attracted enormous direct foreign investment. Ultimately, criminals also benefit from the free movement of goods, capital and people. Do you see a link between the socio-economic developments of the recent past, and the (apparent) rise of new and deadlier forms of criminality? There are certainly differences in the way criminals operate. There were no car bombs before, for in- stance. Not until fairly recently, at any rate. Gangsters have been killed in the past, but they were usu- ally knifed. If you look at the case of 'Iz-Zus', for example - a notorious thug who was stabbed to death in Hamrun - it was more in the style of 'Arab-Mediterranean' doings. But blowing people up to bits.... that's something quite new for Malta. Quite new. Even if you look at the attack on The Times of Malta in 1979, which was bad enough: prob- ably the nearest in terms of outrage, certainly in recent times... because we were talking about the 1920s before. This was the 1970s. What is worrying, even when you compare the 1970s with the 1920s, is that in 1929, the culprit was caught and put in prison. In 1979, on the other hand... even though I've heard vari- ous names mentioned, and some of the gangsters involved were recog- nised... there wasn't a single arrest made. That was next door to the Prime Minister's office. And when the Opposition leader's wife was beaten up at her home in Birkirka- ra, after the gutting of The Times... again, no one was arrested. So, I guess, this is what the Opposition leader is on about today, and civil society in general. The culture of impunity. If that's what it is, it's very frightening.... Others might also mention the case of Karin Grech, also killed by an explosion, and also in 1979. That case remains unsolved to this day... Yes. Raymond Caruana is another example. He was machine-gunned to death in a drive-by shooting, while having a drink at a party club. It wasn't intended to kill him, of course. He was just behind the door. But Karen Grech wasn't the intend- ed victim, either. The letter bomb was addressed to her father. These are all violent crimes which have never been solved. Not quite as dra- matic as a car bomb, though. We've had several car bombs in recent years, where there were none be- fore. So there is a new culture of car bombs... if you can call it a 'culture'. If you ask me, it's a degeneration. It doesn't say much for social evolu- tion, except in the wrong direction. But who has ever been arraigned over car bombs in Malta? Nobody. I think it's terrifying, frankly. Even [Former Italian premier] Aldo Moro's assassins were eventually found. And with [anti-mafia judges] Falcone and Borsellino, there were massive manhunts for the killers. There are differences in those scenarios, though. Moro was murdered by the Brigate Rosse, which was ultimately a politically- motivated terrorist cell. And it claimed responsibility for both the abduction and the eventual execution. Here, we are talking about a situation where anyone with money or contacts can hire a criminal organisation to kill anyone... The question here is whether we have our own version of the 'Brigate Rosse'. I don't think so, but we defi- nitely have an underworld. When the owner of the San Lawrenz Kem- pinksi resort [Joe Baldacchino] was shot on his way to court in Valletta, by a chap on a motorcycle who then disappeared... we still don't know anything about that crime. We don't know if the murderer was Maltese, or if he had a speedboat waiting for him somewhere. I think that's quite possible. Same with the case of Fathi Shaqaqi, one of the leaders of the Islamic Jihad, who was gunned down outside the Diplomat Hotel in Sliema in 1995. He was probably killed by Israeli intelligence. So if you begin to list them all, it becomes more frightening still. This was not a one-off... Meanwhile, there are public calls for the resignation of the Police Commissioner and the Attorney General, as well as for an overhaul of Malta's law enforcement infrastructure. What are your own views? Do you agree that Malta's institutions need to be revamped? Yes. I would have thought that advances in technology should not only benefit murderers, but also those who are paid to catch them. Maybe we don't have the sophisti- By Raphael Vassallo I think it's a gross exaggeration. Apart from putting Malta in a bad light, I don't think it is fair to describe Malta as a 'mafia state'. On the whole, we've had quite a solid judicial tradition in Malta: even in the worst of colonial times A terrifying culture of impunity I would have thought that advances in technology should not only benefit murderers, but also those who are paid to catch them TECHNOLOGY 'MAFIA STATE'