A man charged with drug-trafficking, facing the prospect of life imprisonment, walked out of court free late on Monday night after a week-long trial which ended in a 'not guilty' verdict. 

A smiling Mr Cardona celebrates the verdict.

Edward Cardona, 36, from St Paul’s Bay, stood accused of conspiring to traffic cocaine as well as the aggravated possession of the drug in a case which owes its origins to the arrest of a female drug courier at Malta International Airport in 2013.

On that occasion, the suspect was found to have been carrying a number of drug-filled capsules inside her stomach, with subsequent hospital checks yielding some 73 capsules bearing almost one kilo of cocaine with a street value of €57,513.

The star witness at the trial, whose name could not be published under court order, had told investigators how she had been instructed by an Algerian man from Spain called ‘Obi’, to smuggle the drug into Malta and hand it over to pre-determined customers.

In the course of her collaboration with the police, the woman had allegedly recounted how she had visited the island several times, before being stopped and arrested at the airport in July 2013.

The woman had cooperated with investigators, later taking part in a controlled delivery operation which led to the arrest of another foreigner.

During her interrogation, the drug mule had recounted an earlier visit to the island back in December 2012 when she had allegedly met “a tall, fat and bald man resembling Uncle Fester from the Addams’ Family,” in order to hand over some 70 capsules of cocaine and a further 20 grams of the drug, in terms of his agreement with ‘Obi’.

The woman had identified the accused from six photos shown to her by the police, later confirming her statement under oath.

That statement had placed investigators on the tracks of Mr Cardona, who was ultimately arraigned in 2013 over charges of his involvement in the drug-trafficking conspiracy as well as possession of cocaine in circumstances indicating that the drug was not for his personal use.

The proceedings had resulted in Mr Cardona’s trial by jury, kicking off on Monday March 11, in the course of which the prosecution had summoned various witnesses, among these the former dru mule who had undergone separate proceedings and had been convicted of importing cocaine on three separate occasions prior to her arrest.

Although the witness had failed to identify Mr Cardona in the course of the compilation of evidence, she identified the accused at the trial, the prosecution arguing that the woman was a credible and consistent witness.

However, the defence team, led by Franco Debono, cast doubt upon the credibility of the witness who confirmed that she had been shown a photo of the suspect by the police - before being asked to identify him as the person whom she had met back in December 2012.

The defence argued that the whole identification process had been contaminated, further pointing out that no identification parade had been conducted.

This fact, coupled with the fact that the witness had failed to recognise the accused in the compilation stage but had done so at the trial, could lead to a miscarriage of justice, Dr Debono had argued, when making lengthy submissions in the closing stages of the trial.

The jurors were “to dismiss the whole identification procedure as inadequate and vitiated”, Dr Debono had concluded.

After almost five hours of deliberation, the jurors returned with a not guilty verdict that read 7-2 in respect of the first ground of drug-trafficking conspiracy and a unanimous verdict of not guilty in respect of the aggravated possession of cocaine.

In the light of this verdict, Mr Justice Giovanni Grixti, presiding over his first trial by jury, pronounced the accused not guilty and ordered his immediate release from custody.

Lawyers Nadia Attard and Ann Marie Cutajar from the Office of the Attorney General are prosecuting. Lawyers Franco Debono and Amadeus Cachia were defence counsel.