Man’s right to fair hearing breached when witness was not allowed to testify against Neville Gafà

An Appeals Court found that Khaled Ibrahim Ben Nasan’s right to a fair trial was breached when his main witness, journalist and politician Ivan Grech Mintoff, was prevented from testifying in the first court because it had deemed Grech Mintoff’s testimony as “hearsay evidence.”

The court declared on Thursday that Grech Mintoff had barely begun testifying when the first court suspended his deposition. 
Mintoff had been called to the witness stand in April 2019 by Nasan’s defence, to testify against former OPM envoy Neville Gafà regarding a medical visas racket he had allegedly been running.

Nasan said that he had handed Gafà €37,000 so that the latter could process and provide medical visas for Libyans who wished to seek medical attention in Malta while Libya was going through a civil war.

Nasan had said that Gafà was employed with the health ministry but that it seemed that he also worked at the OPM to facilitate agreements between Malta and Libya.

Inspector Rennie Stivala had said that Nasan had also filed a police report at the St Julian’s police station when he allegedly was threatened by Gafà over the phone. Stivala had said that he had reverted to the service provider to find the SIM from which the threatening messages were sent. 

“It resulted that the threatening messages were sent from a phone that belonged to Nasan himself,” Stivala said, adding that he had initiated criminal procedures against Nasan for filing a false police report.

However, during the hearing, Nasan had said that a certain Ivan Grech Mintoff could corroborate his story. In 2016, Grech Mintoff had been advertising a television programme surrounding the medical visas story, with such advert saying that certain individuals would be speaking about monies they had allegedly passed on to Gafà for medical visas.

Grech Mintoff had allegedly told Nasan that he too had been threatened by Gafà after the advert was aired and promised he would testify in this regard. However, the first court had deemed his testimony inadmissible since it was based on “hearsay evidence” and was “not related to the case.”

The Appeals Court disagreed, however, saying that the court should decide whether evidence is hearsay or not after the deposition and not before it is heard. "This is something that is decided upon judgement."

The court decided in favour of Nasan and ordered proceedings to continue, and Ivan Grech Mintoff’s testimony to be allowed. It ordered the court expenses to be paid for by the Attorney General.

Joseph Zammit McKeon was the presiding judge.