Six-year inquiry raises international questions on local justice

Magistrate Jacqueline Padovani Grima concluded that there were sufficient grounds to determine that the Kleine Familie, a small French fishing vessel which foundered in 2006, resulting in the deaths of five of its crew members - had been involved in a collision with a much larger vessel: the Malta-flagged chemical tanker, Sichem Pandora.

The duration of the magisterial inquiry has since been called into question by the French media, after a separate investigation by French maritime authority had come to the same conclusions four years earlier.

The facts hitherto established by Beamer - the French authority responsible for maritime safety and similar considerations - were that the Klein Familie had set sail from Cherbourg with six crew members on board at around 4.15am on 5 January 2006.

Later that morning a passing merchant vessel reported sighting a red rocket flare; and at 9.45am, she picked up a sole survivor from a life raft.

No trace was ever found of any of the other crew members.

A French military submarine eventually located the wreck, and divers determined that the vessel had been involved in a collision with a larger ship. Preliminary investigations established that the damage on the wreck of the French fishing vessel corresponded to a dent on the keel of the Malta-flagged ship.

Among other things, the French inquiry determined that: "The first decisive factor in the shipwreck was the poor visual lookout carried out on the Sichem Pandora, with the small radar cross section of the Kleine Familie as a contributory factor, the presence of the flashing marker lights and poor lookout on the part of the skipper being the two other decisive factors."

The Sichem Pandora was escorted to Dunkirk and impounded by French maritime police pending criminal investigations.

The Maltese ship's owners, Tesma Holding, have consistently denied allegations that it had crashed into the Klein Familie, and then sailed on without offering assistance to the stricken crew.

Justice Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici confirmed at the time that the initial investigations had been taken over by local authorities... and that was when the delays began.

"The Maltese authorities were requested to take over the investigation by the French authorities, after the latter had initially commenced investigations," Mifsud Bonnici told MaltaToday in 2008. "I confirm that it is the wish of the government of Malta that all proceedings, including this one, are concluded at the earliest opportunity."

However, it took another four years for the local magisterial inquiry to be concluded: and as the remit of the French inquiry was limited only to recommend an overhaul of maritime procedures, relatives of the victims of this tragedy were unable to pursue criminal action against those allegedly responsible for the accident.

Tensions are understood to have since evolved between Malta and France over this issue, as family members of the victims have been lobbying for reparation through diplomatic channels.

In May 2008, the matter was raised by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon in a meeting with Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi during his visit to Malta. However, a senior Department of Information official had prevented MaltaToday, among other news media, from asking any questions at the subsequent press conference.

Now that the inquiry has been concluded, the reasons for the delay remain unclear. Legal experts who wished to remain anonymous told this newspaper that the case was unusual in that it involved cross-border complications. Retrieving all the necessary information was not a straightforward affair, and matters were not helped by the fact that one of the court-appointed experts, Captian Mario Grech (formerly of the Gozo Channel line) was separately embroiled in a controversy which cost him his job at the local transport firm.

The French media were somewhat less generous, and openly attributed the delays to a reluctance to embarrass the Maltese government, which has recently been heard boasting about the size of its international shipping register.

The overdue conclusions - which were indeed embarrassing to the local registry authorities - may have put paid to that particular interpretation, but questions linger over the efficacy of a inquiry system which takes six years to reach a conclusion that another authority reached in only two.

Death in Qormi

Similar questions were raised again recently in Parliament in connection with another ongoing investigation: this time into the fatal shooting of a 52-year-old man by the police in Hal-Qormi in 2007.

Sebastian Borg was gunned down by three police officers in Main Street, Qormi, late one evening in May 2007. The police had been called to the scene on account of a disturbance caused by the 52-year-old man: who afterwards transpired to be already known to the police, and who was separately being treated for mental disorders at Mt Carmel Hospital (whence he had recently been discharged).

Borg was armed with a penknife and had reportedly threatened passers-by and damaged private property. He was shot five timesby three policemen, suffering fatal wounds in the head, chest and shoulder. 

It later emerged that the police had previously been warned about Borg's psychiatric condition by means of a letter to the Polcie Commissioner from his family. But despite the introduction of non-lethal restraining devices such as pepper spray - which had been distributed to the police shortly before the incident occurred - the officers despatched to the scene of the disturbance were not equipped with any such device, and instead opened fire with live ammunition.

Commissioner of Police John Rizzo responded to the initial news reports by convening a rare press conference in which he publicly defending the police officers concerned, arguing that they had acted in self defence.

The magisterial inquiry - also entrusted to Jacqueline Padovani Grima - was instituted immediately, but five years later there are no indications of when, if ever, it is expected to conclude. And unlike the Sichem Pandora incident, there are no cross-border complications involved.

One year after Borg's death, then Justice Minister Mifsud Bonnici told this newspaper that he was 'unhappy' with the delays in concluding such investigations.

"The earlier it's concluded, the better," he said with specific reference to the Borg inquiry. "The longer they take to conclude, the more constrained we will be when we get to making changes to the system. There is a fixed term in the law by when they should finish an inquiry, set at 60 days. I understand that at times they need to wait for some experts' report, or they have a work overload. There are some inquiries that get done in two months' time, but they're not the majority...

"I'm not satisfied at all with the situation. There are too many inquiries that are not yet concluded and, together with the Attorney General, I'm looking at what happens abroad so that I propose amendments in this regard. There is a huge quantity of pending inquiries," Mifsud Bonnici said.