The Labour Party’s media yesterday published an illicit recording in which Richard Cachia Caruana is heard talking privately about former Nationalist ministers Guido de Marco and Lawrence Gatt in connection with the events that led to the attempt on his life in 1994.
Mr Cachia Caruana – a long standing PN strategist is also heard mentioning former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami, whom he served as personal assistant. “One of my things with Eddie was, yes, I’m sorry, at the end of the day, you know, if you had spoken to this guy, this wouldn’t have happened,” Cachia Caruana says, referring to a meeting to take place between Dr Fenech Adami and Brigadier Maurice Calleja.
Mr Cachia Caruana has linked his stabbing to the resignation of Brigadier Calleja, whose son Meinrad was caught drug trafficking. Then, Brigadier Calleja asked for a meeting with Dr Fenech Adami but this was not granted immediately.
Instead, Brigadier Calleja met with the late Guido de Marco, then deputy Prime Minister, who arranged for a meeting with Dr Fenech Adami.
According to the recording, published yesterday, Mr Cachia Caruana is heard saying he had “no doubt” that Prof. de Marco would have likely told Brigadier Calleja that the demand for his resignation was something pushed by Mr Cachia Caruana himself. In the recording, Mr Cachia Caruana also remarks that Prof. de Marco’s “children” ended up defending the person who tried to kill him.
Prof. de Marco had written aboutit in his autobiography. “I told him (Brig. Calleja) I was sure the Prime Minister, whom I knew held Calleja in high esteem, would see him and I advised him to decide about his resignation only after he had met him. Calleja had his meeting with the Prime Minister some hours later.”
Prof. de Marco described the meeting as “innocuous in substance and correct in all its detail” and he could not understand how this was interpreted by some as an act of subversion against the Prime Minister.
In the recording Mr Cachia Caruana is also heard saying that if it was not for former Minister Lawrence Gatt and his escaped son (Etienne Gatt), “nothing would have happened to me”.
The Labour Party has refused to say when the recording took place or how it was obtained.
Mr Cachia Caruana yesterday reiterated his rejection of the spin given to the recordings by Labour media, saying that no PN ministers were involved in his attempted murder and that he had never thought they were.
“It is shocking and inconceivable that one would suggest that I believed there were Nationalist ministers involved and I carried on working with them,” he said.
Anyone who followed the trials of the three people accused of his attempted murder would know who he, but more importantly, the police believed was involved in the attempt, Mr Cachia Caruana said.
“The allegations by One TV, 18 years after the attempt on my life, that the people behind the attempted murder are people other than those identified by the police and the prosecution, are disgusting and completely out of place.
“But these allegations are in line with Labour’s largely successful attempts in the past, to sabotage the trials of two of the accused by undermining the credibility of the main witnesses. They would have done the same with the third witness had he not admitted,” he said.