No inquiry was held into 12 falls from the back of the Police Headquarters in Floriana, the spot from where a Maltese suspect claimed he had been pushed from shortly before he died.

Nicholas Azzopardi, who died from the injuries he sustained a few days later, had claimed he was beaten up before being thrown off the bastion at the back of the Floriana headquarters.

The allegations were found to be unsubstantiated by two inquiries. However, interest in the case was rekindled last week after Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, in answer to a parliamentary question, revealed that there had been another 12 incidents were people fell off the same bastion.

Eleven of these falls, which according to the Police were attempts to escape from the Floriana lock-up, happened during a single year between 2005 and 2006, when the premises doubled as a detention centre.

However, a twelfth “escape”, by a Malian man, took place in March 2010, almost two years after the Azzopardi case. Yet there was no inquiry and no press release was issued, as had happened with all of the other cases.

According to the police, the grand majority of cases involved escapes in which the migrants in detention attempted to scale down the bastions with make-shift ropes made out of bed-sheets or clothes.

They said no magisterial inquiry was held because none of the escapees sustained life-threatening injures (two people sustained serious injuries).

Moreover, it was felt there was no need for a statement, the police said, since in all cases the people involved were apprehended shortly after their escape in the vicinity of the headquarters, with the exception of an Algerian who was never caught after escaping in 2006.

In his reply to the parliamentary question, Dr Gonzi said a police investigation had taken place in all cases.

However, when asked by The Times the police failed to specify what action had been taken to prevent further incidents of the sort, particularly after the Azzopardi case.

The police said: “When the Detention Centre was closed down way back in 2007, the fence surrounding the back yard of the Detention Centre was removed. However, today access to the back of the CID yard is closed by a gate which makes any attempt to escape very difficult.”

Asked if any officers had been disciplined in connection with these cases, the police said: “Disciplinary action was taken where it resulted that there was negligence on the part of the officer who had to see over the custody of these persons.”

In his reply to the parliamentary question by Labour’s MP Evarist Bartolo, Dr Gonzi also offered an amnesty to anyone who could come forward with information that would shed new light into Mr Azzopardi’s case.

The development came in the wake of questions particularly about the integrity of the CCTV footage supplied by the police to the inquiries which miss the crucial moments of Mr Azzopardi’s fall.