Oh, goodie! Another police internal inquiry. First there was Bastjan Borg: shot five times in the head, shoulder and chest after threatening the police with a penknife in March 2007. Sixteen months later, the internal investigation is still under way, and so is the magisterial inquiry... one of over 2,000 such inquiries currently traipsing about in never-never land.
Then there was the case of Nicholas Azzopardi, who last April died in Mater Dei Hospital soon after informing a magistrate that he had been beaten to a pulp in police custody. And what do you know? His death is now subject of an internal investigation, and a magisterial inquiry which means we might just get to know what really happened by 2097.
You’d think the police were altogether too busy investigating themselves over excessive force and homicide, to get involved in yet another allegation of mindless brutality. But no! Along come Ismail Abubaker from Sudan and Kaba Konate from the Ivory Coast, both drunk and causing trouble in Paceville, and... not only were they beaten senseless by four policemen while lying handcuffed on the ground; but one of the eye-witnesses, a law student named Rebecca Filetti, was also taken into custody on no apparent charge. She was later released after what was clearly an illegal arrest... and yet, not one of the brave policemen who arrested her has been charged with any offence.
Of the numerous police officers currently under investigation for brutish behaviour ranging from torture to murder, none to my knowledge has been suspended from the force. And only the ones involved in the Nicholas Azzopardi case have been named: by the victim’s family, not by the police themselves. As for the rest, we don’t know who they are. Which also means the next time you call the police to make a report, the officer who handles your case could himself be facing an internal inquiry for a violent crime.
At which point we could well ask: is this normal? Is it standard procedure for police officers to face such accusations, without the general public having a clue as to who they actually are? I don’t think so. And it’s not the only anomaly, either.
In all of the above cases – and there are others, which for various reasons I’d rather not go into right now – the official police reaction appears to have been a mad rush to cover up for the suspects. In the Bastjan Borg affair, there was an immediate press conference aimed at exculpating the officers involved, long before all the facts were even known. But no mention was made that Borg’s family had warned the police in writing about Borg’s psychiatric condition, and that he posed a danger to himself and others after being discharged from Mount Carmel Hospital.
Over to Nicholas Azzopardi, and the police’s immediate reaction was to inform us all, by means of a press release, that the man had injured himself in an attempted escape. It fell to the media to add that he had also claimed to have been brutally beaten up (“tawni xebgha tal-Beati Pawli”) – a fact which the police would evidently rather never came out at all.
More suspiciously still, subsequent police versions differed radically on a number of cogent details: according to one version (released three weeks after Azzopardi’s death, which in turn was two weeks after the alleged beating) the police officers involved had even tried to save his life... and yet, no mention was made of this rather important detail in the official report.
Which brings me to the great imponderable of our times: what year are we living in, exactly? I was under the impression that it was 2008, but I tend to get these things wrong. Especially when so much of what’s happening looks almost exactly like we were back in 1981.
Back then, the only legal constraint upon interrogating officers was that a detainee could not be held for more than 48 hours. What they did to that detainee in those 48 hours was of course their own business, and if the suspect happened to die under interrogation... well, his body would later be found under a bridge in Qormi, and a press release would claim that he had “died while trying to escape”. (Now where, oh where have I heard that one before?)
Today, 27 years later, we find out that the laws governing arrest and interrogation procedures were indeed overhauled in 2004... but guess what?
The amendments regarding rights of suspects in custody still can’t be effected, because the government has unaccountably failed to publish the relevant legal notices.
Of course, as the Labour government knew in 1981, and the Nationalist government found out soon after 1987, there are certain advantages to the status quo. It is easier to secure a confession, and hence a conviction, when blind eyes are turned to torture and degrading treatment in custody. But there are disadvantages, too: no government really appreciates being compared to Zimbabwe or the Myanmar Republic, especially when it has been trumpeting its “European credentials” to the whole world for 20 years. So by passing the amendments through parliament, but then failing to actually implement them, the Nationalist government appears to have hit upon the perfect compromise.
All this would be fine and dandy, if in the meantime we could trust our police force not to beat suspects to a pulp in custody, possibly even killing them in the process. But I can’t vouch for that myself; and personally, I wouldn’t believe anyone who did.
Leaving aside the long list of alleged police beatings, there is another reason I find it impossible to place any trust in the Force.
Try as I might, I can’t avoid the impression that like so many other supposedly autonomous institutions in this country of ours, the Malta Police Force also doubles up as an occasional extension of the Nationalist and Labour Parties’ dirty works departments.
Let’s face it: there is one law for politicians, and another law altogether for lesser mortals such as you or I. This is after all the same country in which a former Prime Minister (now President) could simply pick up the phone, call the former Police Commissioner (now managing director of Malta’s largest telecommunications company) and order him to stop investigating an attempted murder case... because he wanted to investigate it himself.
While we’re at it, this is also the country where a deputy leader for Malta’s Opposition party can publicly state that he “authorised” the present Police Commissioner to investigate an anonymous letter... but spectacularly fail to specify where he derived the “authority” to issue any such authorisation in the first place.
Can any citizen “authorise” the commissioner of police to investigate person/s of his or her choice? Or do you have to be a potential future deputy Prime Minister to get away with it?
Oh, and I nearly forgot the most recent case of all, in which the police – as usual, upon orders by a politician – investigated a dodgy permit for a disco in Mistra, and then proceeded to arrest and charge every single public servant involved in the case... but not the government MP who had been identified by all suspects as the man who had pressured them into submission in the first place.
Looks like it’s one law for Philip Azzopardi, Anthony Mifsud and Lawrence Vassallo... and another altogether for Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (who is a politician, and therefore entitled to “special” treatment.)
All rise for the National Anthem: “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands...”