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Karl Schembri
Hashim Youssef Azzabi must have been one of Edward de Bono’s most deviant disciples to successfully use lateral thinking to escape from Corradino prison five years ago while still facing drugs trafficking charges.
With his death a month ago still unconfirmed by the Libyan government, details about the man’s final moments in prison are emerging, as fellow Corradino prison inmates and former prisoners speak out to MaltaToday.
They recall the 49-year-old former engineer and Libyan Arab Airlines pilot avidly attending lateral thinking classes at the prison school during the nine months he spent in custody, describing him as a “reserved” and “intelligent” man.
“He used to come for lateral thinking classes and spend most of the time on his own. He didn’t use to mingle much with other prisoners,” a former prison inmate says. “I remember he had also started learning the guitar and was all the time playing Santana’s Samba Pa Ti.”
Meinrad Calleja, who is convicted of drugs trafficking, speaks of a significant detail which he only understood with hindsight.
“I remember, on the day he escaped, he made an overseas call and then gave me back all the books I had lent him,” Calleja says.
While also recalling Azzabi’s attendance during lateral thinking classes, Calleja says the prisoner had quit smoking while in custody and remembers him going to the gym everyday.
“He used to do a lot of exercises, especially running,” Calleja says.
One of the Corradino prisoners’ ‘tricks of the trade’ is to feign injuries, sometimes by staging suicide attempts, so that they get a drive out of their humid, dull prison cells to the relevant hospital. Some tell prison wardens that they swallowed blades, to be rushed straight away for an x-ray at St Luke’s or Mount Carmel Hospital; others invent injuries that can only be examined by specialists at St Luke’s or Boffa Hospital. Often, if they are caught to be lying blatantly, they end up in an isolated cell for some time as punishment.
Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg had said in Parliament on November 1999 that Azzabi had been taken three times to hospital during his arrest: once to St Luke’s Hospital in Pietà and twice to Boffa Hospital in Floriana, including on the day of his escape.
The former inmate who spoke to MaltaToday recalls Azzabi complaining of back pains after sessions at the gym.
“That was a sure way to be taken to Boffa Hospital,” he says. “I would say that after his first visit to Boffa he must have decided that the Corradino-Floriana trip was the most advantageous for a potential fugitive.”
On August 9, 1999, after returning Calleja his books, Azzabi was taken for treatment to the Floriana hospital, escorted by only one unarmed district police officer, when he escaped in mysterious circumstances.
Since then, a lot of questions remain unanswered and the minister’s vehement refusal to launch an independent inquiry does not help much to clear the air.
According to unconfirmed reports that have reached MaltaToday, the Libyan fugitive was found dead in his car in Tripoli with a gunshot wound in his head and a revolver in his hand on Wednesday 14 July, a scene suggesting that he committed suicide.
More unconfirmed information that reached MaltaToday last week says that, on that day, Azzabi had just attempted a hold-up, but his armed robbery was somehow foiled.
The Malta police were also informed of his death although they have not received any official confirmation from Libya so far.
“Various attempts were made to obtain more information vis the Interpol channel with the Police in Tripoli,” a police spokesman said. “Enquiries were also made with the Libyan Embassy in Malta. However, this information has not yet been officially confirmed.”
Questions sent by MaltaToday to the Libyan People’s Bureau also remained unanswered.
karl@newsworksltd.com
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