Raymond Caruana remembered

A melancholic nation

Italy's legendary sports journalist Bruno Pizzul never knew Raymond Caruana - or anything about Maltese politics, for that matter - but yet on the afternoon of 6 December, 1986, he passed a remark that perhaps described our nation during that particular time: "It appears to me that this nation is quite melancholic..."

Pizzul was commenting live from Ta' Qali national stadium, where Azeglio Vicini's Italy faced Gencho Dobrev's Malta side for the 1988 European Cup qualifier.

The game was won by Italy with goals by Ferri and Altobelli, but the 15,000-strong crowd lived those 90 minutes under surreal circumstances, as news of a young man killed inside the Nationalist Party club in Gudja the night before was slowly sinking in.

Sporadic rain, accompanied by gusts of cold air, contributed to the visible sense of disbelief among the crowds that attended the game that day.

It was an age of no internet or news on demand, and thousands of Maltese were reliant on Radio Malta's hourly news bulletins that reported the death of a young man in Gudja.

The sense of the report - as it was presented - seemed a regular tragic story, but most understood the gravity of the situation the country was facing.

That same afternoon, a shocked PN leadership met at the party's headquarters and pondered on the way forward. Tension and fear filled almost every household, as Caruana's death was the culmination of a political climate that had spiralled out of control, given the impunity enjoyed by a gang of thugs who until a week earlier had stood shoulder to shoulder - hooded and armed - next to the infamous Special Mobile Unit (the police force's elite), and violently denied the PN the 'privilege' of entering Labour's bastion: Zejtun.

Mayhem at Zejtun

Of all the numerous incidents that shamed the police force during the late 1970s and 1980s, the Tal-Barrani Road incidents of 30 November, 1986 are an exceptional showcase of institutional decadence.

Then works minister Lorry Sant was recorded on VHF radio in close contact with police and army officers, who together with Labour thugs were closing off Zejtun, denying the PN entry to the town which Labour considered as their "fortress".

In one instance, when a police officer reports that a man has been injured in the clashes, Sant is heard asking: "is he red or blue?"

Earlier, another police officer informs Lorry Sant that two trucks were on fire.

The former minister asks whose they were, and as the officer replied "theirs", Sant is heard saying: "Well done (prosit)... continue".

Throughout these exchanges, the Nationalist crowd was repeatedly referred to on radio as 'those' while the PN leader was simply referred to as "their leader" (il-leader taghhom).

Scores of people were injured during the ensuing clashes, as volleys of tear gas were fired onto the PN supporters who tried to advance towards Zejtun.

It's a very short distance from Tal-Barrani Road to Gudja, but the events that led to that tragic night on 5 December, 25 years ago, were riddled with a series of events involving the ammunition discharged from the same weapon - a Sterling machine gun - that ultimately killed Caruana.

The same gun was fired in Tal-Barrani, on the PN club in Tarxien, and again on the PN club in Gudja,  all in the space of five days. The Tarxien shooting was perhaps the most telling of all, given that witnesses reported to the police that the gun was fired by a person who travelled with a Labour carcade which stopped in front of the club, with witnesses identifying the then-notorious personality of Anthony 'It-Toto' Carabott with his Land Rover.

Summoned as a witness in the re-opened compilation of evidence on the Caruana murder in 1997 - almost 10 years later - Carabott confirmed his presence in Tarxien, but he couldn't remember hearing any shooting because his car radio was playing loud music.

Carabott was synonymous within the gang which was made up of no fewer than 25 men, amongst which were also Edwin 'Il-Qahbu' Bartolo, Michael 'Il-Qattus' Spiteri, Ganni 'il-Pupa' Psaila and Alfred 'L-Indjan' Desira.

They had become household names, but not, is seems, for the police force, which was led by Commissioner Lawrence Pullicino, and who later served a 15-year prison sentence for his role in the beating and murder of Nardu Debono in 1980.

The police never arrested Carabott in connection with the Tarxien shooting, but his subsequent arrest, hours after Caruana's death, revealed minute traces of gunshot residue on his person, as well as on Edwin Bartolo.

The evident reluctance by the police to investigate the Tarxien shooting led to the escalation in Gudja, and if serious investigations were conducted then with regard to the Land Rover, Caruana's murder could perhaps have been avoided.

Death in Gudja

Eddie Fenech Adami recalls the night Caruana was killed as the most shocking experience of his entire political career. Before him lay the lifeless body of a 26-year-old youth whom he never knew, but who suddenly became the symbol of a growing resistance against political thuggery which, with hindsight, was symptomatic of a reality that the party in government was ruling despite a 1981 electoral result which put it into a minority.

Caruana was killed by the only bullet out of 13 shots fired from the Sterling machine gun, which managed to penetrate a glass door. The rest were all embedded in the stonework around the door.

He was struck just under the chin as he tried to duck from the shots, with the bullet perforating his jugular. He bled to death in seconds.

In the rain-drenched High Street in Gudja, police cars drove over spent cartridges which were then circled in chalk as "evidence" and later elevated for ballistic tests which confirmed they had been fired from the same weapon used in Tal-Barrani and Tarxien just a few days earlier.

It was for this reason that Fenech Adami had shouted at the police in Gudja not to waste any time and to look for the famous trio: Carabott, Bartolo and Spiteri.

It is unknown what the police did, but the three named suspects were arrested separately in odd sequence: five hours, 10 hours and 14 hours respectively.

All three had minute traces of gunshot residue, which although places them at a scene where the weapon was fired, didn't directly place them at the scene of the crime.

According to official documents, Edwin Bartolo had been brought to the police headquarters at 5pm the next day "freshly washed" and with "glossy hair".

But as parliament was summoned the following Monday - 9 December - Eddie Fenech Adami, as Leader of the Opposition, had stood up to declare the pending debate on Budget 1987 as "irrelevant".

He was repeatedly heckled by Labour ministers and MPs as he tried to address the House, while booing echoed from the stranger's gallery.

In what may be described as one of his memorable speeches in parliament, Fenech Adami turned to Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and denounced his inability to ensure democracy in the country.

Caruana's murder was a careless oversight by a party in government that believed it was in power to stay, and years of impunity to a bunch of 'privileged' thugs and think-alike police officers, it was a tragedy just waiting to happen. But the worst was yet to come.

Under tremendous pressure by growing anti-government sentiment, a restricted number of police officers decided on a devious plan, and pick on an innocent man to take the fall for the murder.

Frame-up in Safi

The weapon used in Tal-Barrani, Tarxien and Gudja surfaced just a few days later, during a police search in a farm belonging to Peter Pawl Busuttil in Safi.

Busuttil may have been a simple pig-farmer, but it didn't take him long to realise that he was being framed. He had the presence of mind not to touch the weapon as police officers pulled it out of a sack which was "discovered" during the search.

Footage of the search taken by police officers show a calm but concerned Busuttil, who simply crossed his arms in apparent defiance to what he was being subjected to.

Lawrence Pullicino - the same police commissioner whose conscience was tainted by the brutal death of a suspect in custody and later dumped under a bridge - was also present during the search on Busuttil's farm. That day, Pullicino turned to Busuttil and insisted that he pick up the weapon. He also told him that he (Busuttil) was sitting on a "bubbling volcano".

Once in police custody and under interrogation, Busuttil showed character and never succumbed to the pressure. He didn't even accept a glass of water or food, for fear that his fingerprints would be conveniently picked up and placed on the weapon.

It was established that when Busuttil was taken to the CID yard, there was an atmosphere of celebration, where officers were seen drinking and heard calling their colleagues to celebrate the finding of the weapon that killed Raymond Caruana.

Busuttil was subsequently charged with Raymond Caruana's murder, remanded in custody and later transferred under police escort to St Luke's Hospital after he fell ill under duress.

Busuttil claims that his lawyer - then PN deputy leader Guido de Marco - had kept close contact with him, while also playing out a determined legal battle in court and outside to prove the devious frame-up - had told him to keep his eyes 'wide open' as it may not be excluded that something might happen at night.

The Safi pig-breeder feared that he would be pushed out of the hospital window, to plummet to his death, and that the officers who framed him would claim that he tried to escape.

Busuttil let out a shout the night when the door to his ward was gently opened as three men started to walk in, only to retreat and shut the door again behind them.

The story behind Busuttil's frame-up however was becoming more obvious due to the ingenuity of the same police officers who plotted it.

Busuttil is seen in Dione Borg's book being escorted by a young John Rizzo. Rizzo argues that he was only providing security and following orders. He was later to become Commissioner of Police.

The inquiring magistrates working on the Tarxien and Gudja shootings claimed to have never been informed by the police that they had searched the farm in Safi and arrested Busuttil. They were neither informed that the weapon was also discovered, and that they were charging a man with Caruana's murder.

The hastiness of the plot was quickly falling apart, when Magistrate David Scicluna presided over the compilation of evidence in Busuttil's case.

Scicluna had declared that there was ample evidence that Busuttil had been framed. The Magistrate pointed a damning finger towards Inspector Joseph Pico, then head of the Police Intelligence Division, who throughout the proceedings had given false testimony and fabricated evidence against an innocent man.

Pico was charged with perjury and sentenced to prison and received a general interdiction. On appeal however, the disgraced Inspector had his prison term changed to a suspended sentence, but the general interdiction was retained.

Busuttil was acquitted in July 1987, two months after the Labour Party was swept out of power and the country struggled to regain confidence in its institutions.

Justice denied

The PN, led by Eddie Fenech Adami, was elected to power in 1987 under the rallying call of 'Work, Justice, Freedom' (Xoghol, Gustizzja, Liberta).

Defeated at the polls, Labour was faced with the daunting prospect of answering for the events that tainted the country's political history while in power.

Those who held ministerial posts, senior government positions, police and army officers knew very well that their days were numbered.

Fenech Adami's first televised address from Castille stressed the need for national reconciliation, a message he repeated as months went by.

De Marco took over Justice and Home Affairs, swiftly promoting Maurice Calleja to the post of Commissioner of Police, and with a handful of officers initiated a thorough re-organisation of the force, sending home quite a few of the 'rotten apples' but strangely keeping and later promoting a number of other shady officers who were no strangers to abuse of power.

Between December 1986 and the May 1987 elections, political violence was the order of the day.

As Eddie Fenech Adami summoned the crowds to large mass meetings around the island every Sunday afternoon, the police continued with their rounding up of militant activists, while more stories of arrests and frame-ups were appearing.

On 5 April, 1987 some 120 policemen, including members of the Special Mobile Unit, sped to Rabat where the PN was organising a political activity for families.

On the pretext of 'reported scuffles' police vehicles arrived in Rabat and SMU officers took positions surrounding the PN club, which was situated in a narrow road behind the church.

When volleys of tear gas were hurled towards the club, one canister entered the building on the first floor and set the place alight.

Those who were inside ran for their lives, only to find policemen in riot gear and shields blocking every corner.

This blockade led to a confrontation, and while PN supporters were attempting to seek protection from the tear gas, police officers were seen kneeling down and taking aim with their weapons.

Activists Joe Vella and Mario Pavia were seriously wounded in the shooting, with bullets in their backs.

In 2000, former SMU sergeant Jovin Grech stood trial for the Rabat incidents but was acquitted of all charges.

All officers on 5 April, 1987 wore masks and nobody could be identified, while the main witness who had stood his ground in the initial stages of the investigation - identifying Grech as the one who shot him - had died before the trial.

Former deputy commissioner Anthony Mifsud Tommasi had declared during Sergeant Grech's trial that he was told that "only tear gas" was used when he asked the SMU chief Inspector Charles Cassar what weapons they were using.

But Cassar, who led the same SMU unit that was involved in the Tal-Barrani and Rabat incidents, found himself promoted to Superintendent under a PN administration, and also led the security detail of most visiting dignitaries after 1987, including US Presidents George Bush (Snr) former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, and Pope John Paul II.

Cassar was surprisingly relieved from duty by a new Labour government led by Alfred Sant in 1996. During the 1980's Alfred Sant was president of the Malta Labour Party.

Ironically, Sant also removed Assistant Joseph Psaila from the force when elected in 1996, a man who was implicated in Martin Gaffarena's frame-up in 1985.

The Nationalist Party in government after 1987 had immediately ordered the expulsion from the force of a number of senior officers, among whom former Inspectors David Stubbings, Joseph Pico and Superintendent Bonello.

The three were expelled on the basis of evidence of their involvement in frame-ups, beatings and threats.

But what remains a real mystery to many is why the PN in government never removed Sergeant PS710 Joseph Mangion, the man who was proven to have carried Nardu Debono's body on his shoulders from a CID interrogation room, putting him in the luggage booth of an unmarked police car and dumping the corpse under a bridge.

PS710 was former commissioner Pullicino's driver and according to evidence given in court  - which led to Pullicino's eventual incarceration - Mangion was, in simple words, his master's cleaner.

Mangion - whom history places inside the PN's Dar Centrali on the night the police raided the building in 1986 - went on to serve in different police stations to "uphold" the law. No action was ever taken against him despite calls for him to stand trial for his role in Debono's death at the hands of the police during interrogation.

Persisting impunity

When the PN was elected to power in 1987, a Permanent Commission Against Corruption was set up, and looked into a number of cases which evolved around a close-knit clique of men.

In 1989, a year before the commission made its report public, the Labour party general conference decided not to allow Piju Camilleri, Victor Balzan and Joe Camilleri to participate in any party activity. Balzan - who was also found to have connections to the Sicilian mafia -  subsequently stated that he never formed part of the Labour party. The suspension came in the wake of the damaging evidence that was about to surface.

It was in September 1990, seven months after the commission's report, that the police filed charges against Lorry Sant, Piju Camilleri, Victor Balzan, Joseph Camilleri, Joe Pace and Ganni Camilleri.

The five individuals were accused of corruption. Among others, Lorry Sant and Piju Camilleri were also accused of abusing their public posts for personal gain.

However, in a ridiculous legal twist in May 1991, during the compilation of evidence, Magistrate Carol Peralta decried that although in some of the cases there was enough evidence to issue the accused with a bill of indictment, none of the cases could be prosecuted because they were prescribed by law.

In Maltese law, corruption carries a prescription of five years. This means that unless a person accused of corruption is brought to justice within five years of committing the crime, he cannot be prosecuted.

Despite clear evidence pointing toward scandalous deals involving thousands, if not millions of former Maltese liri, threats, abuse of public office and a bare-faced rape of Malta's land area, nobody was brought to justice.

In 1992, former Labour justice minister Joe Brincat had written to the President of the Republic Vincent Tabone, to stay the criminal procedures instituted against former Lorry Sant, who was under indictment over the infamous law courts incidents during the afternoon of 19 June, 1987.

Sant was among a group of Zejtun thugs who ransacked the law courts when they were charged with corrupt practices on voting day in May 1987.

The fiery former minister was eventually pardoned and died in 1995, aged 56.

In 1994, Edwin 'Il-Qahbu' Bartolo was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment after he was found guilty in a trial by jury for his role in violent acts committed in Zejtun in 1981 when former PN MP Josie Muscat was visiting voters in his hometown.

Shots were fired that day and cars were set on fire. The trial was riddled with witnesses who, 13 years after the incidents, couldn't remember the day.

But Bartolo was acquitted of all charges on appeal and freed from prison after spending just a few months of his 10-year term.

The stories of impunity are endless and reveal a dark side of Malta's history. A history made up of mysteries and hidden hands.

Nobody was ever charged with the ransacking of Eddie Fenech Adami's home in Birkirkara and the burning of The Times building in 1981.

Nobody was ever charged with the gruesome murders of Wilfred Cardona and Lino Cauchi, nor was anybody charged with young Karin Grech's brutal death in 1977.

A 25-year mystery

25 years have passed since Raymond Caruana's death, and the country can only wonder who his killer might have been.

It is a known fact that if the police had seriously investigated the Tarxien shooting just a few days earlier, the Gudja incident may not have happened.

But as inconclusive evidence partially acquitted the prime suspects, further evidence suggested that the night Raymond Caruana was killed, Eddie Fenech Adami was meant to visit the Gudja club.

While a mysterious car was said to have been seen roaming the small village, the police station just metres away from the club was closed early, and the policeman - new to the area - was ordered to patrol on foot.

Some investigators suggest that the shooter did not go to Gudja coincidently, but knew that a reception was underway for the inauguration of the club, and that Fenech Adami was to be there. The target may well have been Fenech Adami himself.

The abusive arraignment of Peter Pawl Busuttil had stalled and deviated the magisterial inquiry, while precious time was wasted by the police who blatantly sought to protect the real killer.

The gun was not only cleaned when allegedly found inside Busuttil's farm in Safi, but it was now out of the hands of any other suspect.

There could be no more search for it, and investigations into who had it, and how many hands it changed (too many) over the years and how many times it was modified, weren't enough to prove who shot it.

On Christmas eve of 1990, the police - now under a PN administration - had charged Nicholas 'Ic-Caqwes' Ellul from Valletta with Raymond Caruana's murder.

Ellul was arrested on the basis that he had reportedly boasted to a third party that he had the weapon, and that he had shot Raymond Caruana.

As the police interrogated him to establish if Ellul was bluffing, he admitted to having had the weapon but denied shooting or killing Raymond Caruana.

Based on the fact that he did not say to whom he had passed on the weapon in December 1986, Ellul was left to face the music, and was charged with the murder.

In 1991, Nicholas Ellul was indicted, and his case was forwarded for trial by jury, only to have the case re-opened in 1997 when another notorious Zejtun Labour thug, Gianni Psaila (il-Pupa). came forward with new information.

Psaila had previously approached Eddie Fenech Adami to reveal what he knew about the shooting in Gudja, claiming to have been present.

After months of investigations based on what Psaila told the Police, he benefitted from a pardon on condition to speak the truth and reveal all he knew.

Il-Pupa implicated Karmenu Farrugia, a former driver to then Labour Minister Karmenu Vella, but Farrugia claimed to have an alibi that he was in parliament with his minister on the night in question.

The re-opening of the compilation of evidence proved inconclusive, even on the fact that Psaila was hesitant to say all he knew, especially in revealing names, while also confusing times and locations.

Psaila however insisted on his statement that Farrugia was the man who held the weapon and fired the weapon in Tarxien.

But in court, Farrugia had provided four different alibis, stating that at the time of the incident, he was in the Prime Minister's private kitchen in the House of Representatives.  The alibis included Captain Vassallo (later Brigadier), the chief messenger of the Prime Minister, police and security of the Prime Minister. The alibis were revisited in 1997 and reconfirmed.

Il-Pupa died that same year under mysterious circumstances, when he attempted to escape from two police officers who surprised him while stealing from a bar in Marsa.

Psaila, who had a limp due to serious injuries sustained due to a car bom explosion some years earlier, at a time when he was allegedly seeking to "liberate" himself from the burdens on his conscience, had apparently ran to a roof and fallen to his death into a shaft.

The mystery stops with?

Former labour minister George Vella may be the key to unlock the mystery behind Raymond Caruana's death.

Gianni Psaila had claimed to have confided in George Vella, former finance minister Wistin Abela and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, and that he told them who the shooter in Tarxien was.

Called to testify, the former Labour Prime Minister said that whatever he knew, he had passed onto the police. Mifsud Bonnici couldn't even remember if he was still Prime Minister when he spoke to Psaila, nor the details of the conversation.

Former Zejtun minister Wistin Abela, also on the witness stand, said that the only thing he knew about the Tarxien shooting was through the newspapers.

But George Vella was different. In court, Vella stated that his relation with Gianni Psaila was strictly professional. Psaila was his patient in Zejtun.

He added however that if Psaila told him anything, his advice was for Psaila to speak to the Prime Minister.

The twist comes when Vella was asked about what Psaila told him, in the context of his intention to "open up" ("jiftah qalbu"), he invoked professional secrecy.

"I don't think that I should speak... I don't wish to reveal what was said. I don't think it is relevant."

Until Friday, George Vella remained adamant in this position, and told MaltaToday to stop asking him about what Psaila may have revealed.

Coming to terms

On 13 December, 2008 a few months after Joseph Muscat was elected as leader of the Labour Party, there was a tangible effort to close the unhealed wound of Raymond Caruana's death.

Muscat held a short private meeting with two of Caruana's brothers. The meeting took place at the La Stella Band Club in Gudja, just a few metres away from the PN club.

The meeting lasted some 10 minutes, and was not planned.

A party statement later said that "both Muscat and the brothers (Albert and Tarċisio) knew that the other would be present, but no appointments had been made".

Muscat, however, was reportedly trying to fix a meeting with Caruana's family in a bid to build bridges outside his party.

The Labour leader later paid a visit to the PN club where Raymond Caruana was killed.