Witness in Gozo 15kg cocaine bust declines to testify

The owner of a Mercedes in which 15kg of cocaine were discovered upon its return to Malta from France has declined to testify in the compilation of evidence against the driver, Joseph Rodney Grima of Ghajnsielem, Gozo.

Carmel Polidano, the car's owner, and his son, Christopher, both assisted by lawyer Franco Debono, briefly took to the witness stand to inform the court that they would not be testifying so as not to incriminate themselves.

Grima, of Ghajnsielem, Gozo, appeared in court this morning, as prosecution witnesses testified.

Grima is charged with the importation and possession of 15kg of cocaine which had been discovered inside a Mercedes E-class 350 that had been purchased in the UK and transported to Malta by ferry.

A Police Sergeant told the court that four transporter-trailer trucks had disembarked the ferries and he had inspected the cars with customs personnel. There was one car that he had been asked to keep an eye on, as the owner was not immediately identifiable, he said. The truck driver had told him that he had been asked to pick up the car in France by his boss as it had broken down. He had found Joseph Rodney Grima and loaded the Mercedes on the truck. Grima had followed him in a Renault that was offloaded to make space for the malfunctioning vehicle. Later the owner of the Mercedes in question was named as Carmel Polidano, the witness said.

Police had gone to Polidano's house in Zabbar and asked if he was owner of the vehicle. He had refused to say anything beyond that it belonged to a car dealer, but that he had paid for it. Grima told interrogating officers that had driven the car with Chris Polidano and “a certain Hamid,” on holiday but the car had stopped in France. Arrangements were made to have the vehicle replace a Renault on a transporter-trailer. The accused drove the Renault.

The prosecution witness said that inspections on the impounded vehicle revealed that the car was refusing to start and sounded like it wasn't getting fuel. Customs scans and dog searches had not found anything in the car, which was towed to the police garage. It was dismantled and under the back seat, the seals to the inspection boxes for the two fuel tanks were found to have been tampered with.

The inspection boxes were opened. Out of one tank, 20 packets were extracted and 16 were recovered from the other tank. Once they were removed, the car started. Polidano and Grima, who had been observing the inspection, denied knowledge of the packets he said.

Grima had told the police that the engine check light had been on, but tests on the vehicle's computer system found that it had not ever been on since it left the factory, before that date.

“I had asked the truck driver all the documents of the cars he was carrying. The logbook was in the name of a foreign owner. I needed to know the names of the Maltese buyers. 30 minutes later the transport company owner arrived, as the drivers were unable to tell me. Stephen Attard, the company owner, brought all the cars documents except the Mercedes'. He was on the phone with someone discussing the problem.”

He later returned to tell him that the owner of the Mercedes was Carmel Polidano. The accused was not there, the witness said. “I was interested in the owner. The person responsible is the owner.”

When questioned, Polidano, “stuttering and in fragments, at first told the police that the car wasn't his but then said he had paid for it,” the witness said. He later said his friend had asked him to lend it to him for a 15-day holiday. “That friend was Joseph Rodney Grima.” Polidano had not told him what this holiday was for.

Paul Cassar from Zabbar, one of the drivers employed by Attard, testified. He was entrusted with transporting the car to Malta. Cassar had received the GPS co-ordinates of the broken down car in France and went to pick him up as he happened to be only 30 min away.

They had driven from Macon to Genoa – a 10-hour trip. The accused was driving the Megane for the entire journey, Cassar said, but had slept in the Mercedes. Once it embarked the ship, the car could not be opened, and the key was in Cassar's possession, he told the court. “I loaded it on to the ship and gave the keys to the truck to the loadmaster.” The Megane did not embark that voyage as it had been driven to a gate that didn't accept single vehicles, the driver readily admitted.

The accused had claimed to have driven up to watch a race at Hockenheim in Germany with Chris Polidano and a friend called Hamid. It was pointed out to the court that visiting Macon required a four-hour detour from the Hockenheim to Genoa route the men had originally been driving. Polidano and Hamid are understood to have made other travel arrangements for the return trip.

It was difficult to open the car on the ship, he said. “You can't go onto the car deck alone. You ask the captain who will send a crew member to accompany you.”

Inspector Jonathan Cassar from the drugs squad testified that the arrest had been planned after police had been reliably informed that the vehicle in question would probably be carrying drugs.

The police had established that the car belonged to Carmel Polidano who told them that he had lent it to Grima. Grima was summoned without difficulty. He had been accompanied abroad by a “certain Hamid” and Christopher Polidano. At around 19:30 sergeant Stephen Cassar had called up the inspector and told him that packets had been found in the car's fuel tanks.

The prosecution informed the court that it would be summoning Stephen Attard and the trailer driver Paul Cassar to testify, but from police investigations no grounds for charges against the two were found.

36 packets were recovered in all. One was carefully opened by scene-of-crime officers and a test kit was used on the heavily-wrapped white substance. It was found to be cocaine. The men were then arrested.

The cars started easily after the packets were removed, the inspector said. A subsequent search of the man's residence turned up several mobile phones, weighing scales and shotgun cartridges.

Defence lawyer Joe Giglio asked the witness about the cartridges, allegedly his brother's, found in accused's bedside table, but the inspector had not investigated these bullets yet.

The case continues in September.

Superintendent Dennis Theuma and Inspector Jonathan Cassar are prosecuting.
Lawyers Joe Giglio, Mario Mifsud, William Cuschieri and Alfred Abela appeared for the accused.