Agatha Christie features in final stages of drug trial

Lawyers traded broadsides at the final stages of a drug trial that has been dragging on for eight days with a defence lawyer likening the arguments of the prosecution to the plot of an Agatha Christie novel.

The trial, which has been unusually lengthy given the nature of the charges, has been characterised by constant bickering, which, last Thursday, saw Mr Justice Michael Mallia slamming his fists onto his bench and warning lawyers to restrain themselves.

There was no bickering yesterday but the drama continued.

In a six-hour long address to jurors, lawyer Nadine Sant, from the Attorney General’s Office, likened the effect of drugs to the recent floods that had burst open the warehouse of an undertaker in Qormi and washed away hundreds of coffins stored there. Drugs would do the same, she argued: engulf you and then drag you away with them.

She summed up the facts of the case and tried to punch holes in the defence’s arguments.

But lawyer Joe Brincat, for José Pena, 41, from Colombia, threw a few jibes at the prosecutor’s oratory style, saying Dr Sant was putting facts together to make up a story, just like an Agatha Christie novel.

He poked holes in the point behind the flood analogy, saying in this trial both the prosecution and himself agreed that drugs were bad but the jurors were being asked to judge the sinner and not the sin.

Mr Pena and Domingo Navas, 33, of Panama are pleading not guilty to conspiring to traffic in 1.5 kilogrammes of drugs, worth €133,000, in 2006.

The men were arrested after Enrique Martinez Burgoa, a 43-year-old Mexican drug mule, was first caught with the drugs at the airport and then turned police informant. He was made to phone his contacts, asking them simply to “pick up the drugs”. The accused were arrested when they went to Mr Burgoa’s hotel room even if he had not given them any directions or told them where he was staying.

This, Dr Sant insisted, proved conclusively there was a pre-arranged deal for the men to pick up the drugs from Mr Burgoa, who has already been convicted for importing the drugs and is serving a 12-year sentence.

Another vital point was that Mr Pena had wired more than €21,000 out of the country in just eight months when he did not even have a bank account and was meant to be studying English.

Dr Sant said the evidence was stacked against the accused who, she added, were part and parcel of an international drug ring that was importing dangerous drugs into Malta.

In his rebuttal, Dr Brincat said all the facts mentioned by the prosecution were irrelevant because the accused stood charged with conspiring with individuals outside Malta to traffic drugs. That meant Dr Sant had to prove facts which happened outside Malta and not events in the country, adding that, in that respect, the prosecution had failed.

He questioned Dr Sant’s certainty that the accused had reached the hotel room to pick up the drugs. He pointed out that Mr Burgoa had told the police he was meant to greet the person who picked up the drugs with the name Jimmy. The word Jimmy, Dr Brincat argued, was essentially a password, with which the mule and the contact would recognise each other. However, in the hotel, when the accused knocked on the door, there was no mention of the word Jimmy.

Lawyer Joe Mifsud, for Mr Navas, is expected to begin his speech this morning.