After 17 years in prison and a battle with drug addiction which only got worse at the Corradino Correctional Facility, Charles Muscat, known as il-Pips, tells Mark Micallef he is a changed man who has paid his dues and regrets his past.
The security official at The Times reception informed the newsroom about the person who turned up for an interview with some trepidation on Friday morning.
“A Mr Charles Muscat is here at the reception,” he said, adding, in a whisper, “Charles Muscat, il-Pips.”
He had a stocky man in front of him, not quite the slimmer and younger person in handcuffs seen in the 1994 pictures which il-Pips was notoriously known by nationally when he was first charged with double murder.
But the name rang a bell that reverberated in the memory of the crimes Mr Muscat became associated with.
It is that infamous image that Mr Muscat is keen to shake, a week into a controversy after his early release from prison 17 years into a 25-year-jail term.
After a five-day cocaine binge at his Mosta home in September 1994, Mr Muscat shot dead drug dealer Leli Sultana, it-Tazz, thinking he had been sent to kill him. As he left the house, he threatened a group of bystanders warning them not to report him and ended up shooting one of them, Alfred Grima.
Today, Mr Muscat says he is a changed man, who regrets what he did deeply.
“When you kill two people, it’s no joke,” he says, pointing out that it bears on him “a lot”.
“I have never met the relatives of the victims but have been told that the son of one of them wants to meet me. I’ll do it gladly.
“With the drugs I was not myself, as it emerged in court. Today I’m a different man. Unfortunately, I had to learn my lesson through a long prison term.”
He was torn about giving an interview, turning down a number of requests in the past days, out of fear it would put more of a spotlight on his family.
“I don’t worry about myself, I would happily let you have a picture,” he says at the request of a photo to go with his interview, “but I want to protect my family, especially my youngest son”.
The main controversy surrounds the fact that Mr Muscat was still given remission for good conduct, despite testing positive for drugs while in prison and having a pending case of conspiracy to traffic four kilos of cocaine and a kilo of cannabis.
“First you have to understand how remission works,” he says calmly when this is put to him.
“Every time you test positive, you lose 56 days of remission and I tested positive several times, not once as was reported. I would say (I tested positive) at least 25 times before I became determined to stop.”
Every positive test cost him chunks of remission, during the first 10 years of his sentence when he picked up a heroin addiction from prison. After ending up “almost broke” having sold off his businesses, he decided to go into rehabilitation and won back remission in the next five years, during which he wasn’t slapped with “a single report or positive test”.
“You don’t lose your remission forever but can earn it back and that is what I did. This is all documented and is the same system applied with everyone,” he insists.
But doesn’t he understand the concern of many that a person who killed two people and breached prison rules has been released early?
“It is understandable only because people don’t know what goes on in prison, how it’s full of drugs, how you get thrown into hell and are expected to reform... that you have to take drugs, and you practically have no choice,” he insists.
Like many other before him, he reports a situation in prison where drugs are freely available.
“Out of 17 people in my division, I was the only one not to do drugs. How can you expect me not to take drugs in that situation? The prison authorities know about this but they don’t care, do they? If inmates are not taking illegal drugs they give them anti-depressants, dished out on a trolley. They only care that we are doing time,” he says.
What about the pending drug trafficking case?
“Even if I am found guilty, I cannot be punished twice for the same thing can I?” he asks, protesting his innocence.
Some 19 people were arraigned in connection with the case, including Mr Muscat’s wife Yvette.
“Had the police had anything to pin on me, they would have brought it forward in 9 years. But they didn’t. Why?”
Using his wife’s arrest as an example of the cracks in the case, he says: “She has never been involved in any of this stuff and is always at home with the kids. They arrested a bunch of people because they started arresting the relatives of inmates based on telephone conversations.”
He says that he decided to step forward because he fears that the publicity about his release, “which is just like that of many others before” him would prejudice the trafficking case should it go to a trial.
“Some newspapers seem to have already found me guilty of this crime. What chances do I stand with a jury?”
In the past few days, the story about his release developed when l-Orizzont reported that on top of the early release, he spent six of his 17-year-jail term enjoying more privileges at the Forensic Unit of Mount Carmel Hospital.
He immediately reacts to this. "It’s been portrayed as though I spent these years in Honolulu having cocktails,” he says, with some passion. “It couldn’t be more different”.
His turning point came precisely when he went to the forensic unit, which, he says, is compulsory for any inmate needing methadone (a replacement drug used to wean addicts off heroin).
“The conditions at the forensic unit are favourable now but they were not when I went there in 2006.”
The visiting hours were restricted to half-an-hour a week instead of an hour-and-a-half at Corradino. Telephone access was very restricted and unlike prison, he could not have a DVD or other such items in his cell.
“From this perspective it was much worse but I stuck to it because I wanted to get better, that’s all I cared about,” he says.
Eventually, Mr Muscat says, he earned the trust of the department’s head Dr Joseph Spiteri who gradually gave him and the other inmates more privileges.
“For instance, we were allowed to spend time clearing the yard, which was a mess at the time, to kill time and get some air. More inmates got involved and we eventually refurbished the gardens.”
The trust of Dr Spiteri and the CCF manager Tony Schembri gave him the confidence to believe he could change, he points out, arguing that this was a million miles from what he came to expect in prison.
Asked why the authorities allowed him to spend six years at a place that is meant to be a temporary facility, Mr Muscat is again keen to point out there was no special preference.
“Dr Spiteri knew that if he sent me back to prison it would be difficult for me to stay clean. He was proud of the progress I had made and kept extending my stay on the basis of my good behaviour.
“My recovery is down to my will to be better and thanks to Dr Spiteri and Mr Schembri – not a minister, not the Prime Minister or anyone else. I did my time and now only want to be left alone.”
Living on the edge
Charles Muscat, known as il-Pips, binged on 50 grams of cocaine, without eating and sleeping, for five days, surviving just on water before he shot his dealer and an innocent bystander in Mosta on September 23, 1994.
In his own testimony he describes how he had become a paranoid wreck, believing Leli Camilleri (il-Bully) was out to kill him after he started receiving anonymous phone calls.
He took to renting out different cars, bought a gun and paced his house looking for unusual signs.
It was in this frame of mind that he shot two people. He owed €2,900 to Emanuel Sultana (it-Tazz) who turned up on his doorstep. Instead of asking him for the money, he offered him more cocaine.
Suspicious at how Mr Sultana had found where he lived, it struck him that Mr Camilleri had sent this man to kill him. When Mr Sultana put his hand in his pocket, Mr Muscat pulled the gun and shot him.
As he dashed out of the house, he shot Alfred Grima, who had just walked out of a mechanic’s area. He testified he was in another world and could not understand why he had shot this man when they were friends.
On September 29, 1999, Mr Muscat, then 32, was jailed for 25 years and fined €18,600 for killing a man, fatally wounding another and dealing drugs. He had already spent five years in jail at this point.