Drug trafficking conviction sparks calls of ‘frame-up’
Raphael Vassallo The case of a former police officer, sentenced to 16 years in prison for conspiracy to sell 1kg of heroin, has elicited appeals for a retrial on the part of a noted prisoner’s rights NGO.
In December 2009, former police constable Jean-Pierre Abdilla, 33 from Zurrieq, was convicted on the evidence of Jean-Claude Agius: another former PC, who testified that Abdilla had given him a sample containing 0.59 grammes of heroin, on the promise that he would later sell him 1kg of the same illicit substance.
Agius had separately been convicted on drug trafficking charges, and handed down a sentence of less than a year.
However, a closer examination of the evidence brought against Abdilla reveals a number of anomalies which have not to date been satisfactorily explained.
“This is a very strange case which, given the evidence available, would not have made headway through any tolerable criminal justice process,” Fr Mark Montebello, of the NGO Mid-Dlam Ghad-Dawl, told MaltaToday.
“It seems to me utterly incredible how astonishingly easy it is for all of us, and not just Jean Pierre, to be hounded and possibly ruined by such practices. Though we would like to imagine that we are protected by the system, this absurd case plainly shows that, sad to say, we are not. I submit that the Attorney General is duty bound to stop this case forthwith.”
Significantly, some of the anomalies alluded to by Montebello were even noted by Judge Joseph Galea Debono in his summing-up to the jurors, when he referred directly to the possibility that Abdilla may have been ‘framed’.
Many of these anomalies arise from the main body of evidence as presented in court: namely, a single video clip, taken undercover from a parked van, which purports to show the alleged ‘drug deal’ between Abdilla and Agius in a parking lot.
In the video, Abdilla is seen handing Agius a small and indiscernible white object, which the prosecution later insisted was the same sample of heroin presented as evidence in court.
Abdilla’s defence lawyer Dr Anglu Farrugia, on the other hand, argued that it was a piece of paper that Abdilla had picked up from the ground, and onto which he copied a telephone number from his mobile phone, which he had left in his car (Abdilla had claimed that he had met Agius at that parking lot in order to place him in contact with a number of Libyan nationals who were looking to make contacts in the police force in order to have their residence permits renewed).
It seems however that no fingerprints were ever taken from the sachet of heroin, allegedly handed over to the police by Agius after the ‘deal’. Even more anomalous is the fact – duly noted in court, though it had no bearing on the verdict – that the video itself had plainly been edited after the event.
At two distinct moments, the timer at the bottom of the screen jumps from 2.44pm to 2.49pm – a lapse of five minutes – and then again, another four minutes to 2.53pm.
Abdilla argued in court that these cuts had been made to eliminate from the final video any footage of him picking up the paper from the ground, and writing the phone number on it in his car, which would corroborate his own version of events.
Remarkably, however, it appears that no account of any kind was made of this editing by the prosecution during the trial.
Other anomalies have also been noted in connection with the police procedure employed in this case. Assuming that the prosecution’s thesis was indeed correct, and the object was a sachet of heroin, it remains unclear why neither Agius nor Abdilla was apprehended immediately after this supposed drug deal took place.
In fact, the police allowed two whole months to elapse before finally raiding Abdilla’s residence – and no drugs were found during the raid (although the police did find carcasses of numerous protected birds in Abdilla’s freezer; for which crime he was tried, convicted and charged €600).
Also, there are conflicting versions of how and when Agius allegedly collaborated with the police after his meeting with Abdilla. According to one of the police officers who testified, Agius was found already waiting for the police, when they arrived at a pre-determined rendezvous a few minutes after the ‘deal’.
Testifying separately, another police officer held that they arrived at the scene before Agius, and had to wait 20 minutes for him to show up.
Yet another detail on which these two testimonies are at odds concerns the colour of Agius’ car: black according to one witness, but red according to the other.
Most significant of all, however, is the fact that the jury found Abdilla guilty of ‘conspiring with associates’ to traffic in one kilo of heroin... when no evidence of the existence of this alleged kilo was ever produced in court, and not a single “co-conspirator” was ever identified in connection with the same case.
At a glance, this clearly defies recent case history of direct relevance to the charges at hand. Presiding over the Criminal Court of Appeal last November, Chief Justice Vincent Degaetano overturned a separate guilty verdict on the same overall charge (‘The Republic of Malta versus Stephen Louis Marsden’) precisely because the prosecution had failed to prove the existence of any conspiracy, or even identified any conspirators.
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