16 years jail for former policeman

A former policeman was yesterday jailed for 16 years and fined €40,600 for trafficking in heroin, trying to corrupt an immigration official and keeping dead protected birds.

Jurors returned a guilty verdict after just three-and-a-half hours of deliberation finding Jean Pierre Abdilla, 31, guilty of all charges brought against him.

They found him guilty by seven votes to two of conspiring to traffic a kilogram of heroin, trafficking in the drug, being in possession of the drug and trying to bribe an immigration official.

He was found unanimously guilty of breaching administrative law enforcement regulations and possessing dead protected birds in a chest freezer.

Mr Abdilla, who up till yesterday showed little emotion during the trial, returned from the holding cell with tears in his eyes as the judgment was read out following the verdict.

In submissions on punishment, defence lawyer Anġlu Farrugia asked the court to take into consideration the fact that his client had a clean police record and that only half a gramme of heroin was involved.

However, lawyer Nadine Sant, from the Attorney General's Office, shot the argument down stressing that, since Mr Abdilla had promised a kilo of heroin to the informer, he intended trafficking that amount.

She insisted with Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono, who presided over the trial, that the case was very serious and that up to a kilogram of heroin had been trafficked.

"There were potentially 1,000 victims had the full kilogram of heroin been trafficked," she said.

She also pointed out that, had it not been for the informer, the crime would have not come to light.

The police got to know about Mr Abdilla through the informer, who cannot be named by court order. He confessed that he had been approached by Mr Abdilla and offered a kilogram of heroin to buy. The informer, himself a former police officer, was jailed for drug trafficking in an unrelated case.

The police set-up a controlled delivery of a sample of heroin and then filmed Mr Abdilla giving half a gramme of the drug to the informer. They arrested him on the strength of the informer's statement and the film but found nothing in his possession or at his home except a freezer full of dead protected birds.

During investigations, the police monitored calls and text messages made from Mr Abdilla's two mobile phones and found he had been in contact with an immigration officer at the airport, a certain Josephine Tonna. The police questioned Ms Tonna and she revealed he had once asked her whether she wanted to make some extra cash by allowing some Moroccan friends of his into the country without the necessary documents. She refused.

Mr Abdilla admitted in court to asking Ms Tonna whether she wanted to make some extra cash but denied that it was in relation to trying to get his friends to come to Malta.