The lawyer who prompted a controversial phone call to take place between the Prime Minister’s chief of staff and the Police Commissioner has denied ever making the allegation that the police colluded with the government.
“To set the record straight, I never made any statement, nor any form of allegations whatsoever vis-à-vis the modus operandi of the police,” said Carlo Bisazza, the lawyer of Cyrus Engerer’s father, Christopher (who was arrested over allegations of marijuana possession shortly after his son’s defection from the Nationalist Party to Labour).
Dr Bisazza’s declaration follows a statement by the Prime Minister’s head of secretariat, Edgar Galea Curmi, who explained the sequence of events that led to the phone call. He said the call was made after Mr Engerer, his godson, told him that even Dr Bisazza felt his father’s arrest was probably not a coincidence and they should expect such actions following the defection.
Saying he was abroad in the past few days and could, therefore, not comment earlier, Dr Bisazza said in a statement released to the press: “I would strongly recommend that, in future, before rushing to escalate matters, Mr Galea Curmi should verify the underlying facts; this would have avoided the resulting turmoil over mere hearsay.”
Dr Bisazza said a conversation, its significance and context could easily, even with the best of intentions, get distorted as it was relayed from one person to another.
“Surely a more responsible approach would have been for Mr Galea Curmi to contact me directly (if he felt the need to do so) to put my mind at rest himself – not that I ever demanded any comforting from anyone – rather than ask the Police Commissioner to do that for him. But, more importantly, having triggered off such disarray, based on what he believes I thought or said, the very least he could have done is to ensure that before ‘quoting’ me and releasing multiple statements to justify his actions, he verified that what is being quoted is done so fairly and correctly.”
Dr Bisazza said Mr Engerer (Jnr) confirmed to him he (Dr Bisazza) never made any form of allegation in relation to the police and merely questioned the “‘coincidence’” in the way the events unfolded.
When contacted, Mr Galea Curmi said the issue at stake was not who made the allegation of abuse by the police but the allegation itself, which he chose to address head-on because of its seriousness.
“If you say the arrest was politically motivated, you are necessarily implicating the police even if you don’t mention them specifically. I understand that Dr Bisazza, for whom I have utmost respect, does not want to be seen as giving a negative view of the police but that is what Cyrus Engerer’s statements implied.”
He added that had he called Dr Bisazza, instead of the Police Commissioner, he would have been minimising the claims communicated to him.
Mr Galea Curmi pointed out that Mr Engerer (Jnr) confirmed his account in an interview with The Malta Independent on July 28 where he said: “... after I told him what the lawyer had told us (that this was to be expected now that Cyrus had resigned from the PN), he phoned Police Commissioner John Rizzo.”