Trial by jury | Witness claims he was ‘pressured’ to say he was hired to kill woman

Update 4 | Witness claimed he was approached by accused to kill woman in 2005, now says original version of events given under pressure by police.

The Law Courts in Valletta
The Law Courts in Valletta

A witness in the trial by jury of Ronnie Azzopardi, 41 of Bormla, told the court today that he had voluntarily told police investigators of having been approached by the accused - known as 'is-Sufu' - to kill a woman for him.

Matthew Pace, of Bormla, was summoned to give evidence in the trial by jury where Azzopardi is charged with masterminding and planting a bomb that killed Angela Bondin, in Zejtun on 18 June, 2005, injuring another woman who was standing next to Bondin. The bomb was intended to kill Azzopardi's sister-in-law, who also testified this morning, but the garbage bag in which the bomb had been placed was moved away from the pavement by neighbour Tessie Grima.

Pace knew Azzopardi as a neighbour, but today told the court that it was the police who told him to say that Azzopardi had asked him to plant the bomb, warning him that he would not be released until he said so. Pace told the court that he ended up 'agreeing' with everything the police said.

Pace said he could not remember the details of a conversation he had with social worker Malcolm Micallef, whom he allegedly told how he was asked to murder a woman. Pace originally told the court of criminal inquiry that he was approached by Azzopardi to kill the woman for Lm500 (€1,200) - the plan was to first have sex with her, since she was a prostitute, and strangle her or shoot her the second time they met.

But Pace today changed his evidence, and insisted that (then) Police Inspector Carmelo Bartolo had allegedly forced him to say that, and that he fabricated the story.

Woman testifies

The intended target of the bomb attack today testified before Mr Justice Michael Mallia, in which she said that it was a split-second decision for her to go shopping on the morning of the incident that had saved her life and that of her four children. Her name cannot be published by court order.

The woman said that it was customary of her to visit her mother in Zejtun every Saturday at around 10am, and always parked her car in Santa Maria Street in Zejtun. On the day of the attack, she decided to go shopping in Zejtun, on foot, leaving the car parked where it was, and delaying her departure. When the bomb went off, her mother was hanging the washing on the roof.

When she returned to find the commotion outside her mother's house, she immediately knew that she had been the intended target, after learning a few weeks before the incident that Ronnie Azzopardi, her brother-in-law, had threatened her over a Mercedes vehicle she had inherited from his brother Jason, who had been murdered in Bormla back in 2001. She was approached by the police on the scene of the crime, where she explained that her mother lived there, and that she had been afraid to start her car and that she was extremely worried that the bomb was in fact intended for her.

She told investigators that she was under continuous threat from the accused and that he would stalk her and even threaten to kill her children if she didn't give him the car.

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Kill this, kill that- all for a f-----g car? Welcome to civilisation.