Lack of evidence leads to acquittal on drugs charges

A man was yesterday acquitted of conspiring to import and traffic drugs after a court found that not enough evidence had been brought forward by the prosecution.

Magistrate Francesco Depasquale, presiding over the case, remarked that he is “morally convinced” of the accused’s involvement in the entire criminal operation, however the evidence as presented by the prosecution was not enough.

John Camilleri, 49 from Mqabba, was formally charged with conspiring to traffic/import drugs back in 2002. He is the brother of Leli Camilleri (il-bully).

In December 2001, the Drug Squad was informed of plans for a considerable shipment of cocaine and marijuana to be imported to Malta from the Netherlands.

Police were also informed that several people, some from inside prison, had been involved in the arrangements through their foreign contacts. One of the people involved is said to have been the accused, John Camilleri, while his brother Leli Camilleri had been one of the parties involved from behind the prison walls.

Investigations found that when negotiations began to get the ball rolling for the aforementioned arrangements, Leli Camilleri had begun communicating with Dutch people so that a large quantity of cocaine and marijuana would be shipped to Malta, for the purposes of trafficking.

Leli had also been in contact with several people from Malta to make arrangements for payment. A criminal organisation had been engaged to import the drugs, however, several members were arrested before the plan could be finalised.

In the end, the shipment of two kilos of cocaine, one kilo of heroin, 2,000 ecstasy tablets were seized in Sicily on their way to Malta.

Leli Camilleri was interrogated and subsequently arraigned in court over his involvement.

Through investigations, it transpired that Emmanuel had contacted his brother to help transfer a considerable amount of money to other people involved in the criminal organisation.

Camilleri reportedly accepted the instructions which he received by telephone from his brother Emmanuel, in full knowledge of the reason behind the transfer.

The plan never came to fruition, however, because of the drugs being seized and the arrest of several members of the criminal organisation, inclusive of the accused John Camilleri.

As part of his defence, lawyer Joe Brincat argued that his client’s initial statement should be deemed inadmissible due to the lack of a lawyer prior to interrogations. This law was introduced to Malta in 2010. The court agreed with this objection, and declared the statement to be inadmissible. Magistrate Depasquale noted that this decision assisted the accused in a big way.

Phone and communication records were however found to be admissible because they were taken after a mandate was released by the Home Affairs Minister of the time.

The court took note of the discovery that Camilleri was in “regular communication” with people involved in the crime that never came to fruition, such as Raymond Borg (ilBorza), Charles Steven Muscat (il-Pips) and Mario Camilleri (l-Imniehru), the latter two having been inside prison throughout communications with the accused. It was found that they had mobile phones, a prohibited item for inmates.

Camilleri was also allegedly in contact with a Dutchman, residing in Holland, known as Kleiner.

It resulted that Camilleri was instrumental to his brother, Emmanuel Camilleri, for the purposes of communicating with third parties and helping the operations thought up by his brother.

Emmanuel was serving a prison sentence, while the accused was free albeit pending criminal procedures against him.

Despite the proof that Camilleri was in regular contact with many of those involved in the operations of the crime, the court observed that through a reading of the transcripts of communication between the involved parties, there was no connection between the accused and the importation of the aforementioned drugs which were seized in Sicily.

The court also observed that after hearing conversations between the accused and his brother, the testimony of Emmanuel was not credible at all when he said that the accused’s role was simply to pass on money from between Emmanuel and il-Borza.

Although the court is “morally convinced” that the accused was involved in the entire plan to bring down the drugs from Holland, from the evidence presented to it by the prosecution, this was not sufficient beyond a reasonable doubt.

The court noted that its decision to find the accused’s initial statement to the police inadmissible helped him a lot.

It had no choice but to acquit him of all charges.