Indri Zammit haunts Gonzi again in ‘drugs advice’ case
Matthew Vella There has been no indication of whether Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has approached one of his junior ministers for an explanation on why he advised a client facing drug charges, not to mention the name of a businessman allegedly involved in trafficking.
Questions sent to the Office of the Prime Minister remained unanswered until yesterday, after Gonzi first brushed off the issue as a matter of confidentiality between the lawyer and his client.
The parliamentary secretary, whose name cannot be published by court order, advised his client Ekrem Mubarak, an Egyptian national convicted of drug trafficking, not to mention the name of a businessman in a police investigation.
Mubarak, 26, was testifying in the trial by jury that found Indri Zammit, 54, from Rabat, guilty of supplying him with 14.3 kilos of cannabis back in December 2005.
According to Mubarak, his lawyer – now a parliamentary secretary appointed after the last general election – told him not to mention the businessman’s name in connection to the trafficking case, because of his “importance in Maltese society”.
Mubarak is already serving an 18-year sentence in prison for admitting to drug trafficking.
It will only be until Indri Zammit’s appeal is over that the court ban on both the parliamentary secretary, and the businessman’s name will be lifted.
Zammit, known as in-Nizza, was handed an 18-year prison sentence by Judge Joseph Galea Debono after a jury found him guilty by seven votes to two. Mubarak had told police investigators that Zammit had given the drugs found inside his house: a total of 59 bars of cannabis found in the trunk of his car.
There are five parliamentary secretaries in Gonzi’s government, three of whom are lawyers.
The PN connection Indri Zammit became the source of much embarrassment for the Nationalist Party, due to his past business connections with former parliamentary secretary Tony Abela, the Rabat notary.
Zammit was found guilty of smuggling objects in 1994 worth up to €23,000 on board a fishing boat called Ajaca, then co-owned with Tony Abela. He was given a suspended prison sentence and fined €70,000.
While Zammit was under house arrest after trafficking charges were filed against him, in March 2006 the PN filed a request for Abela’s former business partner to be able to vote from his home.
“Indri Zammit needed our help, and whoever needs our help will get it,” was then PN secretary-general Joe Saliba’s explanation for his party’s appeal to the electoral commission on behalf of the Rabat smuggler to get his ballot for the Rabat council election delivered to his house.
Labour leader Alfred Sant had revealed the PN’s inclusion of Zammit in its list of “sick, elderly or disabled” who had to vote from home because of their condition.
Questions resurfaced about the Prime Minister’s and Abela’s declarations that there were no remaining contacts whatsoever with Zammit. In the letter signed by PN functionary Henri Darmanin, Zammit was listed as residing in his Rabat address, where he as ordered by court to remain confined pending his trial.
“Indri Zammit is not living in a home for the elderly,” Sant had said. “He lives in his residence and he can’t get out to vote because he is under house arrest in connection with a drugs trafficking case. It is totally untrue that Zammit can’t get out of his house because he is sick, old or disabled. He can’t get out because he has been ordered not to by the court."
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