“Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. Victims lie. A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this. The judge knows it. Even the jury knows it. They come into the building knowing they will be lied to. They take their seats in the box and agree to be lied to.
“The trick if you are sitting at the defence table is to be patient. To wait. Not for any lie. But for the one you can grab onto and forge like hot iron into a sharpened blade. You then use that blade to rip the case open and spill its guts out on the floor. That’s my job, to forge the blade. To sharpen it. To use it without mercy or conscience. To be the truth in a place where everybody lies.”
I love that quote. It’s from Michael Connelly’s crime novel The Brass Verdict. Perhaps Simon Busuttil should borrow it, but then, I don’t really like to lend books. You usually lose the book and the friend with it.
I don’t think Busuttil ought to be pinning his political credibility and career to the newspaper reported testimony of one witness, even if he happens to be former Police Commissioner John Rizzo. If for no other reason, because Rizzo made it very clear, under oath – not once, but at least three times – that, in his opinion, the decision to charge and prosecute, is entirely subjective.
Not the happiest choice of words – definitely not a phrase I would expect from any police officer, even if I’m inclined to believe he was telling the truth. That would also suggest that the decision not to prosecute – Rita Schembri for instance – was also subjective. Subjectivity is usually where the trouble starts.
There is no place for subjectivity in the decision to prosecute or not to. It’s an exercise of law and fact – it’s about knowing the law and seeing whether the facts of the case, as they result objectively, fit the description of the law.
There were other unhappy ‘choices’ with Rizzo’s testimony that afternoon. He spoke of the infamous ‘second meeting’ between Dalli, Zammit and Kimberley – the meeting everybody knows never took place – in a way which suggested that, as far as he was informed, the meeting had taken place.
I have it from the horse’s mouth – actually I have it on voice-recorder from the mouths of MEP José Bové and Swedish Match lawyer Johan Gabrielsson. The EU anti-fraud agency (OLAF) and ‘three bad Maltese cops’ told Gabrielsson to perpetuate the untruth – something Bové found ‘quite incredible’.
Gabrielsson’s decision not to set the record straight and to continue to derail the course of justice is something he will have to answer to when the time comes. But what stopped Rizzo from setting the record straight in late September 2013?
Mid-October last year, Dalli resigned as Malta’s European Commissioner, following an OLAF investigation. An OLAF report followed, and this was handed to the Maltese police that same October. On November 12, 2012, Dalli was interrogated by then Police Commissioner Rizzo and two other officers. Thirty-four hours later – 10-and-a-half of which were spent undergoing police interrogation – Dalli was released. His release was perfectly timed with Tonio Borg’s European Parliament viva examination. That lengthy mid-November interrogation did not lead to an indictment then, nor in the weeks that followed.
For his part, Zammit had become a regular visitor at the Police Depot. All signs pointed to worst-case scenario, trading-in-influence charges, because there was no evidence to support bribery or corruption charges. October and November came and went – no charges were ever brought against Zammit. Presumably because the OLAF report was as ambiguous and inconclusive as Bové would attest to. In Bové’s words, the accusations against Dalli were not based on concrete facts.
Even more serious, perhaps, was Bové’s assertion that the OLAF inquiry was not impartial and that in arriving at a conclusion, questionable methods had been used by OLAF, which clearly showed a lack of respect for procedures and fundamental human rights.
On December 10, 2012, Franco Debono brought the Government to its knees. We would later be told by Nationalist spin doctors that Dalli had a hotline to Debono and was definitely behind the fall. Overnight, on December 11, 2012, two months after dragging their feet and being in no particular rush, Zammit suddenly faced bribery and corruption charges and was denied bail.
There is no place for subjectivity in the decision to prosecute or not to
Some may imagine that it took the police two months to charge Zammit because they were busy studying the OLAF report. Others – who don’t just read newspaper court reports, and who know the OLAF report did not unearth anything the police weren’t already aware of – maintain that the decision was taken overnight for one very obvious (political) reason.
Defence lawyers are not in the habit of asking questions they don’t already know the answer to. When Edward Gatt and Kris Busietta, Zammit’s defence lawyers, asked Rizzo whether he had ever spoken to Lawrence Gonzi, Edgar Galea Curmi or Richard Cachia Caruana about the case, they knew the answer to all three questions.
If there was ever a case that hinged on timing and coincidence, it’s this one. Trying to (s)pin the police’s failure to arrest and indict Dalli between October and December 2012, on Dalli’s perfectly timed illness is unbelievable, but hardly surprising. If Dalli was ever a suspect, there was plenty of time to get to him earlier, without Rizzo having to barge his way into the Brussels sickbay.
I agree unreservedly with Busuttil’s concerns about Police Commissioner loyalties. When the Police Commissioner appears to favour the government of the day and when politics and subjectivity threaten the course of justice, the country is in serious trouble. My worry is that Busuttil might be confusing his governments – or maybe his police commissioners.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com