Jimmy Caruana dreads December because it reminds him of his brother’s murder, which happened 26 years ago today.

But it is not just remembering that fateful day, when he was the first family member the police told of Raymond’s death, that causes him pain.

Mr Caruana, 67, says his family has been denied justice for all these years.

“Nobody has ever been brought to justice and there doesn’t seem to be the will to solve my brother’s murder,” he says.

He repeats these words every December when he feels the duty to keep his youngest brother’s memory alive.

“You can use the comments I gave last year because nothing has changed,” he said. “It’s been 26 years and my brother was 26 when he was killed.”

Raymond was gunned down in 1986 at the Nationalist Party club in Gudja, where he was enjoying a drink with friends.

The culprits have never been found but police investigations showed that the weapon used to shoot the PN activist was the same one used by Labour thugs just four days earlier to shoot at the Tarxien PN club.

Raymond’s murder was the climax of a politically turbulent period in the 1980s characterised by bouts of violence perpetrated by Labour supporters.

But December also brings back memories of another murder, involving a 15-year-old girl, which the courts had declared to be politically motivated. Karin Grech was killed when a letter-bomb addressed to her father Edwin, who acted as a strike breaker in the 1970s doctors’ dispute with the Labour government, exploded in her hands. That was December 28, 1977 and Karin’s case also remains unsolved.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com