Mosta field once home to fugitive Ċikku Fenech to become public garden

A 4,000 square metre field in Mosta where the fugitive murderer Ċikku Fenech ta’ Vanġiela once lived, will be turned into a public garden.

The derelict but overgrow field full of trees, known simply as Ċikku Fenech’s, is roughly the size of a football pitch and although  uncultivated and abandoned, serves as a green lung with various olive and cypress trees.

Parliamentary secretary for citizenship Alex Muscat announced the project together with WasteServ CEO Richard Bilocca, and environment minister Aaron Farrugia. The €4.5 million project will be financed by the National Development and Social Fund (NDSF), the national passport sale fund, and administered by GreenServ.

The ministry described the urban project as having a discrete design that will complement the current field with trees, natural passageways, and limestone.  

Farrugia said the project is part of a series of grey-to-green projects in urban zones, which address climate change and contribute to a better quality of life.

Who is Ċikku Fenech

Notorious tenant Ċikku Fenech had been convicted of murder after infamously spending three months on the run. He rose to notoriety in June 1963, becoming Malta’s most wanted man for the murder of farmer Ċikku Vella.

He had hidden in caves in the Tal-Pellegrin in the Ġnejna area until eventually in late September he gave himself up to the police. Found guilty of murder, he was not sentenced to death but given a 15-year prison sentence, of which he served a good deal less.

Ċikku Fenech

In March 1976 he was back in the limelight following a shooting at the Mosta housing estate, in which Kalċidon Zammit was grievously wounded. After hiding in a haystack in his mother's house, he was found two days later and eventualy sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment for attempted murder.

In 2010 he was again condemned to a nine-month, suspended jail term after firing an illegal firearm in a residential area back in 2003.

He died in 2014 at the age of 74.