Court confirms Karin Grech compensation judgement
Compensation already paid
The Constitutional Appeals Court has upheld a court judgement which had ordered the government to pay €420,000 in compensation to the family of letter-bomb victim Karin Grech.
The government had not contested the amount given as compensation but had contested that part of the court judgement that said that the bomb had been mailed to Prof Edwin Grech (Karin's father) in view of the services he had given during a politically sensitive period in the late 1970s.
The judgement of the first court was given on November 30.
The judges ruled this morning that once the government had already made the compensation payment, it had inferred acceptance of both the amount and the reasoning given in the judgement of the court.
The court was composed of judges Geoffrey Valenzia, Giannino Caruana Demajo and Tonio Mallia.
Prof. Grech, who had been working as an obstetrics and gynaecology consultant in the UK, returned to Malta in August 1977 during the doctors’ strike. He became the head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department at St Luke’s Hospital.
On December 28, 1977, a large brown envelope addressed to him was delivered to his house. Inside was a pen-box shaped parcel in Christmas wrapping paper.
His daughter – who was in Malta from her UK school for the Christmas holidays – eagerly opened the parcel that exploded in her hands. She died in hospital and her brother, who was near her, had to be operated upon.