“I’m sure that the police have no intention to kill anyone, irrelevant of who the person is and on what he/she is being investigated. The only true thing in this story (sic) is that he was being investigated on child abuse.”
Thus commented a certain Johann Mifsud on a story which appeared on the Times’ website this week.
Well, what can I say? Nice to see our police force still enjoys such unswerving faith in spite of everything. But then, Mr Mifsud doesn’t quite tell us what makes him so certain the police had no intention of killing Mr Nicholas Azzopardi on April 9, when he allegedly fell off a bastion behind the Police Headquarters in Floriana.
How did he reach that conclusion, I wonder? From a thorough investigation of police behaviour over the past 30 years? I somehow doubt it, considering that the same investigation would reveal at least one former Police Commissioner imprisoned for homicide, as well as a man with mental problems emphatically gunned down by the police in Hal-Qormi just last year (one bullet in the shoulder, three in the chest and a fifth in the forehead. I believe that would qualify as “shooting with the intention to kill”… but who am I to judge?)

Anyhow. Leaving aside the mysterious circumstances of Nicholas Azzopardi’s death, and the constantly changing official version of events (the latest is that the police actually tried to stop him from committing suicide. How very heroic! But hang on… if this is true, why were we only told about it TWENTY WHOLE DAYS after the incident itself?) I believe Mr Johann Mifsud has placed his finger squarely on the underlying root cause of the entire event to begin with.
Nicholas Azzopardi, you see, was being investigated for child abuse. In other words, he had already been tried and convicted in a court of public opinion, and if he was indeed beaten to a pulp during questioning… well, as far as a lot of people are concerned, that would no longer count as “murder” at all.
Make no mistake: it’s an ugly world we live in, made all the uglier when popular suspicion becomes instant fact. Example: how many people know that the original child abuse allegations had been made by the deceased’s ex-wife, after losing custody of her seven-year-old daughter to Mr Azzopardi himself? Probably not many, because while the original accusations were bandied about on the 8 o’ clock news on PBS, the above fact (easily verifiable from court records) unaccountably failed to get a single mention. And yet it is an important detail. I admit I do not often follow custody cases, for much the same reason that I don’t watch Eastenders. I am told, however, that it is rare indeed for a mother to lose custody of a young daughter to the father; and in this case, the reasons emerge plainly from the court ruling itself.
In a sense, Mr Mifsud’s comment is typical of a growing worldwide phenomenon: the sudden inability to see reason or apply perspective the moment little children are brought into the equation. I imagine the PBS journalist responsible for the above misrepresentation might have suffered from the same condition. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turns out that… so did the two fine, upstanding police officers who “questioned” Mr Azzopardi on the night of April 9.
Admittedly, the same argument works both ways. I am the first to admit I don’t know exactly what happened that night at the Police Depot, or at Mater Dei Hospital over the next two weeks. What I do know, however, is that people do not usually emerge dying or dead from police custody, no matter the charge.
Azzopardi’s death appears very suspicious indeed, but there is at least one aspect of that strikes me as clear from the outset. Regardless whose version you believe, the child abuse allegations plainly played their part in Nicholas Azzopardi’s death.
Assuming for a moment that he spoke the truth when he claimed to have received a “xebgha tal-Beati Pawli” at the Depot… would his treatment have been the same, had he been charged with stealing a car stereo instead of abusing his little daughter? I think not.
Assuming, on the other hand, that the official version (or rather, one of the several different official versions we have heard to date) is correct: what exactly was Azzopardi running away from when he jumped over the wall and fell three storeys? What sort of threat or danger would prompt a man to jump in the first place? The fear of being charged with theft/tax evasion/insulting the President of the Republic? Or the fear of being beaten to a pulp on mere suspicion of paedophilia?

As for myself, I can’t help leaning towards the interpretation that anyone’s life can at any moment be destroyed beyond all hope of rehabilitation (possibly even ended outright) by a single, concocted allegation of child abuse. Would any of us be spared a “xebgha tal-Beati Pawli” if we were interrogated over such allegations by some self-appointed arbiter of justice with a black belt in Ju-Jitsu? And how many people would cry foul, if a suspected paedophile mysteriously died under interrogation, and was later found rotting in a field?

I suspect most people would shrug and say: one less pervert in the world to worry about. But of course, I might be wrong…