Grech Sant files second request for bail

Businessman Anthony Grech Sant yesterday filed an application before the Magistrates' Court, requesting bail just two days after his first request was denied on Monday.

Grech Sant, 55, is one of the four men charged with trading in influence and aiding and abetting in the bribery of two judges.

The others are Joseph Zammit, 57, Mario Camilleri, 40, and his son Pierre, 20.

Grech Sant yesterday started by saying that he had been denied bail when the alleged authors of the crime (the judges) had been granted bail.

He said he was not saying this to criticise the fact that they had been granted bail but because these were the facts.

Had they not been granted bail, his arguments would go for them as well.

Grech Sant said he was arrested and released twice before being arrested a third time hours before his arraignment so that he could be arraigned under arrest.

He said that the power of arrest was not only justified by reasonable suspicion but also by precautionary measures without which it would be impossible for the administration of justice to function properly.

The denial of freedom was not to be taken to mean "start paying".

The European Court had had occasion to insist that the courts were not entitled to deny bail on stock phrases taken from the law without being motivated by fact.

One could not forbear to mention the dissonance in bail rulings simply because the court had been presided by different magistrates. The only distinction had been made by the Attorney General, that "(the judges') faces are known to all so there is an element of checking, but these are not".

Grech Sant said he was ill and his circumstances made it inappropriate for him to be detained in jail when he was still presumed innocent. It was well known that preventive custody was more traumatic than an actual sentence.

Dr Joseph Brincat signed the application.