That, more or less, was the answer I got this week when I asked Justice Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici to account for the so-called ‘Internal Affairs Unit’: a department within the Malta Police Force that is supposed to investigate (kindly note the exaggerated emphasis on the word ‘supposed’) complaints made against members of the selfsame corps. But the answer did not come from Mifsud Bonnici himself, or even from his communications co-ordinator.
No: it came from a certain Assistant Commissioner Lawrence Cauchi – henceforth referred to as ‘Ass Comm Cauchi’ (I think you’ll agree it has a certain ring to it) – who briefly entertained me as a guest at the Police Headquarters Floriana Depot last Thursday.
What happened was, roughly, this. On Tuesday I called the Depot and asked to speak to Superintendent Mario Spiteri of the Internal Affairs Unit. I wanted him to clarify a small detail regarding his testimony in the ongoing case against Claudio Overend: a 19-year-old man charged with causing minor injuries to two police officers in a fight over a parking place in Sliema.
Inevitably, Overend himself supplies an entirely different version of events. He claims that it was actually the two policemen concerned – namely Police Inspector Pierre Grech and PC John Farrugia, both from the drug squad – who had violently assaulted him and his girlfriend: first at the scene of the fight itself, and later at the St Julian’s Police Station, where he was detained for the standard 48 hours.
And yet, despite the seriousness of Overend’s allegations, Superintendent Spiteri felt they were not worth the bother investigating. His official reason, supplied under oath before magistrate Edwina Grima, was that two officers involved in this incident had been ‘interviewed under caution’ by two Superintendents, neither of whom (as far as I can make out) actually form part of this increasingly mysterious ‘Internal Affairs Unit’.
What Superintendent Mario Spiteri failed to explain is why he persisted in his belief that an internal investigation was unnecessary... even after Overend’s version was dramatically corroborated by an independent witness, Tolga Temuge.
It seems that Temuge, the Birdlife Malta CEO, took the stand after reading a news report about the same case. It turns out that he was in the traffic jam directly behind the incident, and as such witnessed the entire shenanigan as it unfolded. He told the court that the two policemen, who were in plain clothes and had not identified themselves at the time, had pushed, kicked and punched Claudio Overend, and had extended this type of treatment even to his girlfriend.
In so doing, Temuge not only corroborated Overend’s version almost to the letter: but more significantly, he also directly contradicted the testimony of Inspector Pierre Grech and PC John Farrugia.
Now I might be wrong, but I was under this vague impression that – in Malta as elsewhere – perjury is considered a serious crime. And in this case, perjury must have been committed one way or another. It is, after all, technically impossible for two totally conflicting testimonies to both be correct. But Superintendent Spiteri tells us there is no need to investigate, and no doubt he is a honourable man.
Anyway, these are the things I wanted to talk to Spiteri about last Tuesday. I also wanted to enquire why his unit – if it even exists – had similarly failed to investigate the allegations of verbal and physical abuse made by an 18-year-old woman with regard to several officers of the St Julian’s precinct.
This woman – who by the way is about as threatening in appearance as an undernourished sparrow – was arrested by no fewer than six officers for stepping onto the sand of St George’s Lido with a small dog in her bag last July. (Yes, I know it sounds absurd, but hey! This is the state of Malta with Gonzi as Prime Minister and Carm Mifsud Bonnici in charge of the police). Needless to add, she was charged with assaulting the same police officers she accuses of having assaulted her – on the same day (a Sunday) when her story first appeared in our newspaper.
But despite the gravity of her own claims, she has to date not been asked to testify before this so-called Internal Affairs Unit. It seems her own allegations have been totally and utterly ignored, while those of the police have been accepted as Gospel truth.
By this point, some of you might be reminded of a very similar incident which occurred in the early 1980s. The victim on that occasion was a 19-year-old woman from Sliema, who has since become a rather well-known columnist and magazine editor in her own right. Along with others, she found herself charged by a police superintendent named Anglu Farrugia (ring any bells?) on evidently trumped-up charges of assaulting police officers, and all the usual claptrap.
Such was the absurdity of the bill of indictment that, according to legend, the magistrate himself starting laughing when it was read aloud in court. (As well he might; we are after all dealing with a ridiculous country.)
That, my droogs, took place over 25 years ago in the notorious ‘bad old days’ of Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. Which naturally begs the question: why is police brutality and abuse of power always utterly reprehensible when it happens under a Labour administration – to the extent that apologies are demanded even 30 years after the event – but then, when a similar case surfaces under the administration headed by Lawrence Gonzi, not only are no apologies demanded, but press questions relating to the incident are left unanswered for months?
(Kindly note this is not a rhetorical question. I would like an answer, please... ideally, from Lawrence Gonzi himself.)
Right. Back to my phone call last Tuesday, and it turned out that Superintendent Spiteri was on leave at the time. Surprisingly, it also transpired that the police had never heard of anything called the ‘Internal Affairs Unit’. “Internal x’inhu?” was the general response when I asked... although eventually, I was vaguely informed that the only other person who could possibly help me was ‘not at her desk’ at the time of my call. By a huge coincidence, she was ‘not at her desk’ each of the six other times I called the Depot that morning. Who knows? Maybe it was something she ate the night before...
So I sent a request for information to the Justice Ministry, on the basis that the Minister in question is politically responsible for both the Police Force and (presumably) its internal affairs. But instead of a written reply, what I received was a phone-call early Wednesday morning courtesy of Ass Comm Cauchi, who politely invited me to the Police Depot the following day so that he could explain (or at any rate that’s the impression he gave me over the phone) the ‘procedures’ of the Internal Affairs Unit in person.
Hmm. Was it really necessary for this to be explained on a face-to-face basis, I asked? Couldn’t he have just told me there and then? Or better still, by email? No, came the reply. “Some things are best not discussed on the phone.”
So to cut a long story short, the following day I found myself seated at a desk across from Ass Comm Cauchi, with Superintendent Mario Spiteri sitting to my left. The interview did not last very long. Mario Spiteri did not open his mouth once. As far I am concerned, he may just as well have been a waxwork model, or even a corpse propped up on the chair à la Weekend at Bernie’s.
More to the point, it turned out – to my unbound fury, and precisely as I had anticipated – that the ‘procedures’ Ass Comm Cauchi wanted to explain had nothing whatsoever to do with the Internal Affairs Unit. All he wanted to tell me was to direct my questions to the CMRU... that’s right, the same CMRU that takes anywhere up to seven months to return with an answer. (As I recall, this was roughly when I bust my fuse and stormed out of the Ass Comm’s office. Something that, with hindsight, I admit was not an terribly clever thing to do.)
Just in case any of you might be wondering, neither Cauchi nor Spiteri – or indeed anyone else at the Depot – was in any way threatening or aggressive. I feel it’s important to point this out lest there be any unfortunate misunderstanding. But I also feel that Ass Comm Cauchi needs to be informed about the precise nature of things that fall within his remit. These include the following points:
1. My questions were NOT directed to the Police Force in the first place. They were directed to the Justice Minister, via his spokesperson. If Carm Mifsud Bonnici feels that answering journalists’ questions is beneath his dignity as a minister in the glorious Cabinet of Gonzi, well that’s absolutely fine by me. But at least he could have the decency to inform me as much in person, or through his press officer. Relaying this message through an Ass Comm is just not done.
2. The country is still owed an explanation as to why serious allegations of police brutality have routinely been ignored by an ‘Internal Affairs Unit’ which I am beginning to suspect does not even exist.
3. Why has a very clear suspicion of perjury not been investigated? If not by the police, then by the magistrate in whose court this crime was committed? Or are we to understand that it’s now perfectly OK to simply lie through one’s teeth under oath?
So Carm: should you ever decide to climb down from the stratospheric altitude of your high horse and give us a little explanation, some of us down here would greatly appreciate it. Cheers.
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But the answer did not come from Mifsud Bonnici himself, or even from his communications co-ordinator. 
