In Malta, there is a good chance that you can literally get away with murder.

A total of 110 homicides have been committed in the Maltese islands since 1996, according to data tabled in Parliament by the Home Affairs Minister this week, 77 of which are closed and the remaining 33 still unsolved.

The 70 per cent so-called clearance rate is well below the European average of 85 per cent and points to a significant number of cases – nearly a third – where the killers have never faced justice.

Malta has one of the lowest murder rates in the world: it sits at number 181 out of a list of 219 countries

“Many murders are crimes of passion, which are relatively easy to solve,” Saviour Formosa, a professor of criminology at the University of Malta told the Times of Malta. “But a substantial number are bombings or shootings with links to organised crime, in which case the complexities of the case are greater and it becomes much harder to find links.”

Prof. Formosa noted the level of certainty required to arraign a suspect was particularly high in the case of murder because of the seriousness of the crime. He also stressed the unique elements of each individual case.

Lack of police resources, he added, was rarely an obstacle to effective investigations as much as the absence of specialised tools and technologies or specific expertise certain cases required, despite improvements in this regard over the years.

Overall, Malta has one of the lowest murder rates in the world: it sits at number 181 out of a list of 219 countries, according to the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime based on data from 2015.

There were four murders in Malta that year, of which only one has been solved.

The worst year in the last two decades was 2012, when 12 people were killed in 10 separate cases. Seven were solved and three remain open.

A global homicide report drawn up by the UNODC in 2013 found that homicide conviction rates were significantly higher in Europe than in other parts of the world, which it attributed to low murder rates, the adequacy of law enforcement and criminal justice resources and a greater proportion of “interpersonal homicides”.

In these cases, where the victim and perpetrator are often known to each other, the likelihood that an investigation may establish a clear link is higher. Murders perpetrated by gangs or organised criminal groups tended to be more challenging to investigate than others.

Some of Malta’s unsolved murders (1996-2017)

October 1997: 58-year-old Peter Jones was murdered in his Sliema apartment. A year earlier, he had been assaulted by a Syrian man who reportedly confided that he had been hired to kill him.

November 1999: Mario Bonnici, a 45-year old trapper, was fatally shot twice with a shotgun, probably following an argument, in the early hours of the morning on his trapping site at Ta’ Qali.

December 1999: Joseph Formosa was fatally stabbed 18 times in his apartment in Qawra. Reports at the time suggested the murder may have been linked to a sexual encounter.

March 2001: Stephen Said, known as ix-Xewka, was killed by a bomb under his car, which detonated when he entered the vehicle as it was parked in his driveway in Marsascala.

February 2002: Maria Attard, 78, was found dead in a shaft in Xagħra. An Egyptian national, who admitted to burgling the woman’s house six months earlier, was investigated over the murder but denied any involvement.

March 2007: 25-year-old Russian national Larissa Safranova was found dead at sea in Sliema. The woman was found with a plastic bag over her head and believed to have been asphyxiated.

March 2008: Car dealer Raymond Agius, 49, was shot dead in the Butterfly Bar in Birkirkara. Two men entered it wearing crash helmets and walked up to the victim, one of them shooting him in the head with a pistol before fleeing on a motorcycle.

December 2008: Renzo Borg, 31, was shot twice in the back in the street in Xemxija late at night. Reports at the time mentioned huge debts the businessman had racked up. There were also suggestions the murder may have been linked to usury.

April 2009: The charred body of Gaetano Romano was discovered in the oven of his father’s gypsum workshop in Buġibba. A nail-gun had been used to shoot six nails into his head. Shortly before, he had written a letter expressing fears for his life and naming a suspect.

June 2011: The body of Bulgarian national Irena Abadzhieva, 38, was found partially decomposed with 40 stab wounds in an apartment in Qawra. A man suspected of the murder fled the country.

September 2012: Moroccan Meryem Bugeja, who was pregnant with twins when she died, was killed by blows to the head in her Mġarr home. Her estranged husband was investigated but released without charge.

December 2012: Joseph Cutajar, known as il-Lion, and Joseph Grech, il-Yoyo, were killed in separate shootings on the same morning. Mr Grech was shot 12 times with an assault rifle in Mosta, while Mr Cutajar was shot in the head in Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq. Both were themselves facing charges of murder, and the two killings were believed to be linked.

May 2013: Paul Degabriele, is-Suldat, who had been investigated over the double murder above, was fatally shot five times in his car in Marsa.

October 2013: The body of Paul Grech was found dumped in a crevice in Mellieħa. He was believed to have been killed by a single stab wound to the heart. Reports highlighted the victim’s business connections in Russia.

June 2014: Jonathan Pace, the owner of Tyson Butcher, was killed with an assault rifle in a drive-by shooting while smoking a cigarette on his balcony. That same month, fisherman and restaurateur Darren Degabriele was killed by a car bomb in Marsaxlokk.

Raymond Caruana was gunned down in San Blas in 2015.

March 2015: Raymond Caruana, 54, who had been involved in allegations of bribery of the late Judge Ray Pace, was gunned down next to his vehicle in San Blas, between Siġġiewi and Żebbuġ. A burnt car, with an assault rifle inside, was found in Rabat the next day.

2017: Three murders remain unsolved, including that of Victor Calleja, known as iċ-Chippy, who was killed by a car bomb close to the Maltapost building in Qormi, and the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in mid-October.