Court awards €419,000 in compensation to Karin Grech family

Updated with Prof. Edwin Grech's comments 10:44am.

The First Hall of the Civil Court has awarded compensation of €419,000 to the relatives of Karin Grech, who was murdered by a letter bomb addressed to her father Professor Edwin Grech at the height of the 1977 doctors' strike.

Professor Edwin Grech, his wife Pearl and their son Kevin were asking the government of Malta for a compensation of €582,343 (Lm250,000) for damages incurred over the brutal murder of their daughter Karin, killed by a letter bomb addressed to her father.

The Grech family claimed that their fundamental human right to freedom from discrimination was violated because the government had failed to make an ex-gratia payment to them as compensation following the death of Karin Grech 30 years ago.

"I am happy this case has been decided in our favour. It's not the money that counts but that we proved in court that this was a politically-motivated crime at the height of the medical dispute," Prof. Grech told MaltaToday.

"Initially I didn't accept the government's conditions for compensation, which demanded that we do not press on with declaring the murder to be 'politically-motivated'," Grech said.

Grech was killed by a letter bomb explosion in December 1977 at the height of the industrial dispute between the then Labour government and the doctors, when Prof Grech - a strike breaker - had continued to work at St Luke’s Hospital. The murder remains unsolved.

The compensation case started in January 2008 in the First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction. The family argued that while other families have received compensation from the government, this measure was not applied with the Grechs. The half-million euro claim was discussed in meetings held between the Grechs’ legal representatives and government representatives.

Dr Alex Perici Calscione and Dr Manuel Mallia represented the Grechs.