The wife of murdered drug trafficker Mario Camilleri has expressed her relief at finally getting to rebury her husband, two years after his body was exhumed, and placing him next to her son, who was killed on the same day.
“I used to dream of my son telling me he’s alone down there. Finally my husband is back near him and he’s no longer alone,” Mona Camilleri, 43, said as she stood in the cemetery soon after the burial that took place on Friday – the second anniversary of the double murder.
Ms Camilleri has a 20-month-old daughter, who never met her father or brother, since Ms Camilleri was seven months pregnant when they died.
The bodies of Mr Camilleri, 51, known as l-Imnieħru and his 21-year-old son, Mario Jr, were partially buried in a shallow grave in a field in Qajjenza on July 17, 2013.
Their bodies were found a few hours after Ms Camilleri had reported them missing.
Ms Camilleri’s brother – Jason Galea – and George Galea were charged with murder, though they deny the charges.
On July 23, 2013 – four days after the first funeral – Ms Camilleri gave her consent for her husband’s remains to be exhumed for further investigation.
It’s not right that we ended up without a father
This was necessary to settle a conflict between investigators and medical examiners on his cause of death.
During the court case, experts testified that her husband died of a heart attack caused by a blood clot – not from gunshot wounds. Her son was shot and stabbed 34 times.
Mario Camilleri Snr had been a prominent figure in Malta’s underworld for decades, particularly in relation to drug trafficking.
His most infamous conviction related to the bribery of disgraced former chief justice Noel Arrigo and judge Patrick Vella in 2002. He was convicted of having paid the judges to reduce his 16-year drug trafficking sentence to 12 on appeal.
In an interview with this newspaper a few days after the murders, Ms Camilleri recounted how she had been with her husband since she was 12 and they had four children together: Kerstin, Sera, Sabrina and Mario. Mr Camilleri also had another son, Pierre, from a previous relationship.
At the time, she was pregnant with their daughter. “I’m expecting a girl. I was originally going to name her after my mother, Antonia, but in these circumstances I’ll name her after the three of them – Maronia,” she said.
Ever since Mr Camilleri’s remains were exhumed the family had called on investigators to speed up tests so his body could be released. Ms Camilleri spoke of how she craved closure and dreaded going to hospital for post-natal check-ups, since the thought of his body in the morgue disturbed her.
Finally, in January of this year, the body was released but the family had to wait for two years to pass from the exhumation to be able to reopen the grave. On Friday the family laid Mr Camilleri to rest in the grave near his son. His daughter Sabrina said: “This was important for us... It’s not right that we ended up without a father,” she said.