Court turns down Yorgen Fenech’s illegal re-arrest claim

The prime suspect in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case, Yorgen Fenech, was back again in court yesterday morning claiming his re-arrest was illegal, which the presiding magistrate turned down.

Fenech’s lawyers, Marion Camilleri and Gianluca Caruana Curran, filed the application before Magistrate Audrey Demicoli on Friday afternoon claiming that Fenech’s release on police bail was not “effective” by law, due to the short time between one arrest and the other.

Camilleri argued that between Friday and Saturday, Fenech was only released for 22 hours, to which Deputy Attorney General Philip Galea Farrugia argued had been more than enough time.

She continued to say that this was not the only release that had not been in accordance with the law, and used Friday’s released and Saturday’s subsequent arrest only as an example, as all releases were not effective.

Inspector Keith Arnaud also took the stand, on the request of the Court, and denied that Fenech was released for just four hours, as was being claimed by Camilleri. He then presented photocopies of the detainee book, and continued to explain the timeline of Fenech’s arrest.

Arnaud said that Fenech was first arrested at 5.45am on 20 November, and released at 8.30pm on 21 November, due to the 48 hours having nearly elapsed. He was rearrested the following morning.

On 23 November, Fenech was taken to hospital and was certified to have received medication. Doctors also informed the police that he could not be interrogated for the following 24 hours, due to the medication he had taken.

For that reason, Fenech was released again on police bail, and rearrested 25 hours later. On the 26 November, he was once again released at 11am, only to be arrested the next day. On the 29 November, he was released at 10.50am and then rearrested on Saturday morning at 9am.

The defence then proceeded to ask how many hours, in total, Fenech had been interrogated, to which Arnaud said that he was only officially interrogated on Friday.

Arnaud continued to explain that four informal interviews took place, which totalled to about six hours and 30 minutes. “Every time he was spoken to, he said he had more to add.”

The formal interrogation, which took place on Friday, during which Fenech released a statement to the police, took one hour and 15 minutes.

After the first two informal interviews, middleman Melvin Theuma’s presidential pardon was confirmed, after which the two other informal interviews, and the formal interrogation, took place.

Arnaud said that in the informal interviews Fenech was not recorded, with Camilleri confirming this. She also confirmed that the formal interrogation was recorded, although CCTV was present in both rooms where the informal interviews took place.

The police also said that Fenech was rearrested, on Saturday morning, to continue the formal interrogation.

After deliberating, the Magistrate said all releases by the police were effective and that there had been considerable time in-between arrests. For this reason, she continued, the arrest was legal and turned down the defence’s application.

Inspector Kurt Zahra, and Nadia Attard from the Attorney General’s office, had also been present during the court sitting.

This was the second time Fenech had appeared in court after his lawyers filed a claim that Arnaud should be taken off the case, due to his close relationship with former OPM Chief of Staff Keith Schembri.

This was vehemently rejected by the police, who said that Arnaud had already produced results, in relation to the case, and also noted that Europol has been involved.

During a break in the proceedings, in Fenech’s first appearance in court, he had calmly walked around Republic Street in Valletta, having a smoke and answering journalist’s questions.

Keith Schembri was also interrogated in relation to the case but subsequently released.

Fenech has made three presidential pardons so far, the first two having been turned down. The second was recommended for refusal by the Cabinet, in a meeting which the Prime Minister was not involved in.

After a six and a half hour Cabinet session, that saw protesters trying to enter Castille, the Prime Minister called a press conference at around 2.40am on Friday, to announce this recommendation.

A third presidential pardon was made directly to the President, by Fenech, arguing that Cabinet should not be the ones to decide on whether to recommend the pardon or not. The reason provided for this claim, was that the information he wants to reveal is about Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi and Chris Cardona, amongst others.