Labour’s highs and lows
“Ithought he was the devil,” Josef Grech told police officers. Grech had been on a six-day cocaine spree when he turned paranoid and attacked his friend with a sword. As Grech struggled to bring out his words, his friend fought for his life.
Ronald Dalli spent the whole night snorting cocaine. The following morning, he allegedly stabbed his partner’s 12-year-old daughter 16 times with a 30cm knife. Both her lungs collapsed, her heart was punctured, her spleen, liver, gall bladder, left kidney and pancreas were all lacerated. One rib was fractured with the force of the stabbing. The police sergeant who arrived at the scene testified that he tried to stem the bleeding, “but it was impossible, her breathing was becoming laboured, and she was almost unconscious”.
The girls’ mother testified that “everyone at the hospital said it’s a miracle she survived”.
Pelin Kaya wasn’t so lucky. Jeremie Camilleri, high on cocaine, drove his BMW straight into the young interior designer, sending her flying. He then got out of his car and started throwing stones at the lifeless body. Police tasered him to subdue him.
Karl Vella Petroni was allegedly high on cocaine too when he sped down the wrong side of the road mowing down a motorcycle with its two riders, Faizan Muhammad, and Ali Abbas. They were on their way to work at 6am on May 6, 2023. One died on the spot, the other soon after.
Vella Petroni had already been charged over a separate drink-driving incident that occurred in 2019. But he was acquitted practically of all charges because of a catalogue of errors by the prosecution.
The number of the vehicle on the breathalyser test didn’t match the charge sheet, and he was acquitted of drink-driving despite being well over the limit.
He caused significant damage when he crashed into a roundabout. The quotation for the damages, presented in court, did not include the date of the incident, and he was therefore acquitted of causing any damage. Although he was a recidivist, the prosecution didn’t bother to produce evidence of his previous charges and he was also acquitted of recidivism.
The only thing he was found guilty of was driving without a licence and sentenced to a one-year driving ban. That sentence for his 2019 incident was delivered in September 2023, late enough to allow him to kill those two innocent hard-working men. Now even that sentence has been overturned because the police failed to read Vella Petroni his rights and didn’t even prove that he was driving at the time.
This is the high cost of Malta’s cocaine problem. The price is paid in human blood, life and unending anguish for the relatives and the victims lucky enough to survive. Cocaine abuse is rife in Malta. We know that through a report called ‘New Drug Trends Report’ published by the Correlation-European Harm Reduction Network.
That report paints a picture of widespread cocaine use. “Cocaine is prevalent in all places, including religious festivities, weddings, baptisms and village feasts,” the report read.
The National Report on the Drug Situation and Responses in Malta 2023 showed that in 2022 over 1,900 individuals sought treatment for drug abuse. The majority of those seeking treatment for the first time were abusing cocaine.
Those 1,900 persons are just the tip of the iceberg. Most cocaine users don’t seek treatment. They’re not homeless uneducated foreigners. Ninety-one per cent are Maltese, and the majority have a stable address and are in employment. Over 88 per cent of them are relatively well educated. They could be your accountant or lawyer. Or your children’s school van driver.
Yet, despite the massive rise in cocaine abuse and its catastrophic effects, our police are closing both eyes to the abuse. In 2017, there were 222 arraignments relating to cocaine possession. In 2022, only 12 people were arraigned for cocaine possession – those were arraignments, not convictions.
Arraignments for cocaine trafficking have also gone down since 2017.
None of this makes any sense. We don’t need reports to tell us Malta is flooded with cocaine. We see it all around us – even at baptism parties. Those of us who work in the health sector deal with the lives broken and bodies mangled by cocaine. And the numbers keep rising. The purity of cocaine on Malta’s streets keeps rising too at an alarming rate – from 28 per cent in 2020 to over 51 per cent in 2022.
But instead of tackling the scourge, Labour closes both eyes. The only possible explanation for the precipitous reduction in arraignments is that our law enforcement agencies have instructions not to apprehend or prosecute cocaine abusers. The number of persons arraigned dropped by almost 20 times in just five years. It must be Labour’s policy to let cocaine abuse run rife.
And somebody’s making big money out of this racket. In 2021 alone, 762 kilos of cocaine were seized in Malta. That’s worth over €100 million. It might not have all been for the local market, but it gives a clue of the magnitude of the problem.
And what does Labour do? It doubles the amount of cocaine a person needs to be caught with before facing a magistrate’s court instead of the drugs court. Labour’s planning to allow drug traffickers to be tried before a magistrate instead of by a jury. It’s intending to stop sending those caught with drugs while incarcerated back to jail.
Justice Minister Jonathan Attard claimed his proposals were “so that every person will be able to live a normal life”. Will that 12-year-old, stabbed 16 times, ever live a normal life? Will Pelin Kaya, Faizan Muhammad and Ali Abbas live a normal life?
Malta’s cocaine epidemic must be the darkest stain on Labour’s conscience. The abysmal record of our law enforcement in relation to cocaine abuse is no accident. This isn’t just pathetic incompetence. Arraignments for cocaine possession and trafficking don’t just plummet. Somebody is ordering the police to stop prosecuting cocaine addicts and pushers.
You’d think Labour’s home affairs minister or even the prime minister would be in a panic, frantically trying to control the situation, clamouring for more police resources to fight the rampant cocaine abuse.
You’d imagine they’d call in the police commissioner, demanding to know why only 12 people were arraigned as the country drowns in cocaine. Or why not a single cocaine smuggling ring has been busted.
Instead, the justice minister pushes legislation to go easy on drug traffickers. And the police call in three youths for throwing stones at a duck.
“Somebody is ordering the police to stop prosecuting cocaine addicts and pushers
Kevin Cassar is a professor of surgery.