Crushed and subdued, Mark Agius is trying to summon inner strength to prove his conviction and two-year prison sentence for illegally storing fireworks in the Naxxar Peace Band Club basement is a miscarriage of justice.

The 41-year-old trumpeter, who never took an interest in fireworks but was passionate about the feast’s decorations, believed the court would clear him but he says his faith in the justice system has been shaken. His hopes now lay solely with the appeals’ court.

“I feel as if I’m drowning in mud. I’m broken. When the judgment was being read out I couldn’t stop shaking. Why is the magistrate using me to send a clear message?” Mr Agius asked.

On December 3, Magistrate Silvio Meli jailed Mr Agius for two years to send a “clear message” about a dangerous situation where the safety of others had been “callously ignored”.

The magistrate ruled it was impossible for Mr Agius – one of four who held a key to the basement – not to have noticed the place was packed with boxes of explosives and gunpowder. But Mr Agius is insisting he never saw or suspected anything because all the boxes were hidden in a small room whose entrance was concealed behind a tall white cupboard.

The decision has filled Mr Agius with anxiety. His legs and hands twitch as he spreads photos on the kitchen table to prove it was impossible for him to have seen the explosives.

“I used to store the paint in that cupboard. Little did I dream there was a secret room behind it. I never saw, heard or knew anything about the explosives hidden in this room – I didn’t even know this room existed,” Mr Agius told The Sunday Times.

Speaking from his Qawra apartment, flanked by his wife Charmaine and seven-year-old son Jake, Mr Agius plans to appeal, but in the meantime he fears for his job with the health service and the future is hazy as long as the conviction hangs over his head.

On the day of the judgment the couple were convinced he would be cleared and his wife told him “when you get back we’ll go to church to thank God, put all this behind us and start the new year afresh”.

“I’m so angry. You go to court in the belief the truth will emerge. How can an innocent man be sent to prison? I’m not defending him because he happens to be my husband; I’m standing by him because I believe him. We still trust the truth will finally surface in the appeal,” Ms Agius said.

Police had received a tip-off in May 2008 that fireworks were being stored illegally in the band club’s basement. They raided the premises less than a month after a blast in Ħal-Dejf Street demolished three houses and killed two people – Paul Camilleri, 47, the man suspected of illegally manufacturing fireworks in his garage, and his neighbour Sina Sammut, a 35-year-old mother of two.

After the raid the band club committee, 10 men and a woman, were charged with illegally storing fireworks and their case is still being heard. Mr Agius was charged separately and in his testimony police inspector Elton Taliana said he had been arraigned because he was one of the key holders.

Mr Agius, contrary to many other members, never held a licence to manufacture fireworks, nor had he ever accompanied anybody to the fields where they were let off during the feast.

“Fireworks were never important to me. Playing the trumpet and putting up decorations in the club were my passion,” he said.

Staring ahead and recounting what he has repeated to the police, his lawyer and the court numerous times, Mr Agius said he normally went down to the basement to regulate the timer of the club’s lighting system. However, he insisted he had no idea that fireworks were stored there.

“I sometimes went down with my son. There is no way I would ever expose him to danger or do something so irresponsible if I knew explosives were stored down there. There is nothing to prove I knew the boxes were kept hidden and no fingerprints. So why am I being jailed?”

Handing down judgment, Magistrate Meli ruled that the incriminating material was not kept exclusively in the secret room and was instantly noticeable once anyone set foot in the basement.

However, when Mr Agius was first arraigned, Insp. Taliana told the court: “The fireworks we discovered were hidden behind a paint cupboard. It concealed a small room, about 1.5 metres squared and a storey high, piled with boxes full of fireworks related material.”

The magisterial inquiry report too says “all the explosive material” was discovered in this small room,” which had no window and the only access was through a door hidden behind a cupboard”.

The court also heard how two previous police searches of the basement yielded nothing. It was only after they received confidential information that they learnt about the secret room.

Mr Agius said once the Explosives Ordnance Disposal were called in all the boxes were brought out of this secret hiding place, laid out in the outer area of the basement and photos taken. This evidence, he believed, was why Magistrate Meli ruled it was impossible for him not to have noticed anything.

“I know people out there are saying I deserved the two-year jail term and if I was aware of the illegal storage then I would deserve much more, but this is not the case. I’m clutching at anything that will help me stay afloat – the only thing keeping me from drowning is my family.”

The Sunday Times

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