So it's over, is it?
A couple of really obnoxious newspaper-writers, who were not even in Malta when all this was going on, like to tell us from time to time that ‘come on, people – it’s over.’ Really? It’s over, is it? It isn’t over when many of us who lived through all that and had our lives derailed are still living with the consequences of what happened then. One really irritating columnist, who was growing up in North America when this was happening, needs to think of people like this man, for whom it is far from over, and with no amount of financial compensation ever able to make up for what he endured and for what was stolen from him. My sons are the age this prison warder was when he was framed, beaten and tortured by Labour thugs seeking revenge for the escape of the man who shot their beloved Fusellu. And so I feel the horror more acutely.
The Times, Thursday, 30th October 2008 – 14:24CET
Prison warder gets compensation for 1982 police torture
Former prison warder Anthony Mifsud was today awarded €186,349 in compensation after a court found that his human rights were violated by the police when he was beaten in a police cell. The case goes back to 1982 when Mr Mifsud, then in his twenties, was arrested and questioned by the police following the escape of two prisoners – Louis Bartolo and Ahmed Khalil Habib – from the civil prisons.He had subsequently been accused of corruption and complicity in the escape, but was acquitted after having been kept in jail for three years under preventive arrest. Mr Mifsud had claimed that during his arrest, before being taken to court, he was tortured by (then) Superintendent Carmelo Bonello and Superintendent Joe Psaila, among others. He claimed he was repeatedly beaten and kicked to the extent that he started coughing up blood and could not eat. He said the officers also put a gun to his head and threatened him unless he signed a confession.
The court found that the police officers had violated Mr Mifsud’s fundamental rights not to be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. It ordered the Police Commissioner, former Police Commissioner Laurence Pullicino and former Supts Bonello and Psaila to pay total compensation of €186,349.
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I don’t remember Fusellu, who was he?
[Daphne – You’re joking, right? He was the most notorious Labour ‘middleman’, John Bondin. Anyone who wanted anything had to go through him. He hung around Cafe Roma in Sliema and drove a cream Rolls Royce. He was Labour’s fixer, racketeer and collector of protection money. One fine day he was shot in St Julian’s, by a man called Louis Bartolo who accused him of making a pass at his wife – well, that was the excuse. Though he was killed on the spot, his corpse was taken to St Luke’s and hooked up to various pipes and machines. The government then made an announcement through Xandir Malta that John Bondin was not dead – without explaining, to those who didn’t know, exactly who John Bondin was or what role he played that was so important the government had to make an announcement about it. Xandir Malta showed news footage of what was clearly a dead man lying on a hospital bed linked up to equipment, and surrounded by Labour ministers looking like ghouls and as worried as hell. After all, he didn’t just keep their secrets, but he kept some of their kickback money too. Do you remember the story of Lino Cauchi, the accountant who went missing after two strange men called at his house and picked him up? And whose butchered remains were found down a well many years later? It’s all tied into that. The general consensus was that Louis Bartolo had done a great service to society. Somehow, unknown persons helped him escape from prison – the downside being that a real criminal whose cell he shared had to escape with him – and those same persons got him out of the country, from where he sent regular postcards to the Commissioner of Police, who ended up a convicted criminal himself, eventually. Ashamed that they were made to look like fools, and furious that the man who shot John Bondin had been allowed to get away, the Commissioner of Police and the Labour government went nuts, and persecuted and tortured a naive and innocent 22-year-old prison warder, shoving the blame onto him. A shocking 26 years later, this manhas finally received a court decision on compensation, but no amount of money can ever give him back his peace of mind. He was reduced to a wreck. And then we are forced to listen to endless whining about what is supposedly a greater cruelty than this: being buried in unconsecrated ground when you’re dead and neither know nor give a damn.]
Is it only me or does anyone else think that this poor fellow deserved way more than he was given?
He was stripped off his human dignity, was beaten repetitively until he forcefully pleaded guilty inquisition style, went unbelieved when he desperately tried to convince people he was innocent, nothing happened FOR YEARS after the prisoner who escaped insisted that Mr Mifsud had NOTHING to do with it ,and this without considering the social consequences this poor man had to suffer.
And he gets €186,349 in compensation.
This country is a joke surrounded by the Mediterranean sea.
[Daphne – Right you are.]
So three years of your life is worth €186,349! That’s assuming you completely forgot about it the next day. I doubt very much this man will ever forget those three years!
The court certainly took its time. I feel enraged every time I remember the poor guy’s story. They ruined his life.
[Daphne – I’m seething as I write this. If Muscat is going to make any apologies, he should make this one in person and face-to-face, on his knees.]
Daphne, you forgot another credential of Fusellu. In his car he carried all the rubber stamps required to obtain an import licence . All you had to do was hand over a full envelope of bank notes and he stamped your documents. It is not known whether he shared the takings with some minister.
[Daphne – Patrick Holland was one. No doubt there were others, otherwise why would he be allowed to use the import licensing system to make money for himself? They used to say he was allowed to do as he pleased because he was Mintoff’s bastard – but I think he was just the fixer for others. Somebody had to do it.]
Daphne – “The general consensus was that Louis Bartolo had done a great service to society.”
I remember Louis Bartolo walking into an insurance office where I once worked, probably in the early 1990s, introducing himself as “Jien dak li qtilt il-Fusellu”.
The young man who was about to assist him promptly stood up and shook his hand. His gesture was representative of the feelings of many who had born the brunt of Fusellu’s behaviour. It just goes to show to what dire straits we had been reduced, that we saw murder as salvation.
I think that Mifsud deserved at least 2M Euros as compensation and not from the present Comm of Police (i.e. us) but from the other three – Pullicino, Psaila and Bonello.
I hope they are made to cough up the money to the last cent even if they need to be tortured to do so!
“Though he was killed on the spot, his corpse was taken to St Luke’s and hooked up to various pipes and machines. ”
According to one version I’ve heard, he wasn’t killed on the spot. Apparently he managed to get to his car after being shot, then drove some distance before crashing into the front door of an elderly lady’s house in St Julian’s. It seems the lady emerged to give him a piece of her mind… without having any idea of who he was, or the fact that he was not drunk (as she had assumed) but dead.
@Daphne. Outrageous that this man lived through this and beyond outrageous that this man got a relative pittance 26 years later. What took so long? What’s the story there? I remember this brute il-Fusellu every time I visit relatives because his name is still scratched into the mirror on the elevator in the block of apartments where some of my relatives live in Sliema and where his one time bit on the side resided.
Uncle Fester: Yest it’s outrageous what Anthony Mifsud lived through. Some people didn’t survive at all.
@Corinne Vella. I know and agree. Question though – why 26 years to get a judgment? That is the real story here. Will someone shed light on the reasons behind the delay. I mean we are talking over a quarter of a century delay in what should have been a pretty simple case to prove. The guy was beaten up by people who were identified as police officers and they violated their duties as police officers when they did so. It took 26 years to prove that? At least in the end he got “some sort” of justice – what about the likes of Raymond Caruana and Karin Grech – when will those ghosts be put to rest?
“If Muscat is going to make any apologies”
Muscat claims he’s already apologised for the MLP’s offences. Do you remember those few words crowded into one of the early media appearances after he was elected MLP leader? He’d apologised for “the party’s mistakes, if any, which may have offended someone in the past”.
Maybe you blinked and missed it.
[Daphne – I’m surprised I didn’t blink and miss him in the first place.]
who actually pays Mr Mifsud? Is it the Police Force or the three persons mentioned personally? If the latter then the man’s troubles are far from over as he would probably need to pursue them through the courts for – another 26 years?
[Daphne – The government pays, with your money, for the crimes perpetrated by crooks like Joe Psaila, who has apparently been rehabilitated and allowed to have quite a nice life. Raphael, I believe you can supply the details on this one. Please go ahead.]
I was at school with Lino Cauchi and John Bondin. I knew them both VERY well. We were neighbours in Valletta. Pawlini.
I will not comment on the departed. It is not done. I only want to exhort the younger Maltese generation to delve into these happenings . Anthony Mifsud’s case was just one of many. We lived through hell. Believe it or not the pseudo Nobel prize for peace winner ensured we experienced hell on earth. May you never ever go through what we went through. This is all I wish you. This is all I will ever envy you for. Please, please make sure that history does not repeat itself. The forces of evil in this country are at work and will come back with a vengeance when the opportunity arises.
[Daphne – Yes, I know. Bondin lived round the corner from my grandparents when he was a kid. My father is from that parish too. It is absolutely done to comment on the departed. There would be no biography business otherwise, would there. I did go through what you went through. I’m 44, not 14.]
@ Daphne
Just read your lengthy reply to David Buttigieg. While I was reading I was transported back to those dark days of the 80’s and felt relieved that it is all over now. But the same cannot be said for that poor prison warder. The courts might have ‘awarded’ him some (and I write ‘some’ intentionally) money but nothing will replace the life that was ruined. This country is riddled with injustices and the Courts just put the cherry on the cake.
[Daphne – And you have to consider how grateful he must have been to have got that job in the first place, with unemployment at sky high levels and the government ‘solving’ it with korpijiet tal-pijunieri. I wish I believed in hell.]
I confirm Raphael’s version. The elderly lady, God bless her soul, was a relative of mine. Let sleeping dogs lie…apparti l-Fusellu u compagnia bella… ;)
[Daphne – I can’t forget those scenes on Xandir Malta, with the fixed camera tal-antik trained on the ITU bed and that bed surrounded by ministers led by a Very Concerned Vincent Moran. It looked like a scene from some bad Mafia film.]
How can anyone be a Laburist? It is beyond my comprehension.
@ Daphne
My comment was directed at “the younger Maltese generation” . By this I meant teenagers/new voters who are best placed to determine the future of our country. 44 year old people know exactly what I am talking about and most certainly do not need my advice. I am worried about really “young” Maltese who have had it so good that they are rather sceptical when confronted with details of these torrid times in our recent past. This is my concern.
Daphne”…The general consensus was that Louis Bartolo had done a great service to society. Somehow, unknown persons helped him escape from prison…”
The police commissioner had then ordered the police to ‘shoot to kill’ (an order reported with relish by Xandir Malta TV newsreaders) should any of his men happen to spot Louis Bartolo – which would have been a very convenient way of getting rid of Bartolo and so closing the case without Bartolo being given a fair trial.
The scenario is not unlike the plot to have Pawlu Busuttil thrown out of a 3rd floor hospital window by police guarding him, after he was arrested in a frame-up implicating him in the murder of Raymond Caruana and so closing that case.
Amanda Mallia: “…that we saw murder as salvation.”
Let us put the record straight – Louis Bartolo deserves it. Following the change in government, Bartolo voluntarily gave himself up to the police, received a fair trial, was acquitted of murder on the grounds that he had acted in self-defence in firing at Fusellu – because Fusellu, after saying that he would harm Bartolo’s wife and daughter if Bartolo did not hand over his boathouse to him, had pulled out a gun from the boot of his car.
Very telling was the consistent public reaction to the news that Fusellu had been shot: “Qatluh? Miet? Miet f’ahhar?”
Well sorry ta, I was kind of young at the time! Thanks for filling me in!
I remember people talking of Fusellu, il-Qahbu, il-Qattus, il-Pupa and it-Toto – I was born in 1973. I remember headlines in the Times and In- ______ Taghna with the word Fusellu featured prominently. I also remember hazy photos of a dead man, but I don’t remember much else …
Ah those halcyon days … violence was something we only saw on Starsky and Hutch. You could walk safely in the streets with an In-_______ Taghna tucked under your arm for all the world to see. You could walk around with the uniform of a Church school safe in the knowledge that no one was going to harass you and mention body parts you never knew existed …
Fusellu once, at Styx disco (in the basement of the Eden Beach Hotel, the forerunner of the Intercontinental) made a girl strip totally naked and dance for him on the dance floor. No one lifted a finger to help her.
[Daphne – Do you notice how sex came to be increasingly a part of it?]
Some have il-Fusellu, others have il-Hafi
[Daphne – You were obviously neither in business nor in politics in the 1970s/1980s, nor living in Sliema, if you think any sort of comparison can be made between the two. Did ‘il-Hafi’ use his car as a mobile import licensing office, by any chance? Was he an authorised representative of government ministers and of the government itself? Did he take protection money from businesses? Did he act as an agent for ministers and keep their kick-backs? Did any accountants go missing only to be found butchered in a well as a result of the tangled mess of government corruption of which he was the public face? Go ahead, bury your head in that sand a little while longer. Il-vera qabda msieken.]
Somehow I feel that the delay in justice for Mifsud is also an indictment of the present administration which did not lift a finger to help this person. Was this a form of accomodation? Remember Pavia anyone? He won’t be getting a compensation. The Nat Govt refused to prosecute the criminals at the Rabat shootings and he gave up in desperation.
[Daphne – I agree with you there. They could have given him an ex ufficio payment.]
Daphne, have you ever thought of writing a book about this period? We forget easily, and I bet a lot of the younger generation think we exaggerate when we warn them about the excesses of the Labour Party. The story needs to be told!
[Daphne – Yes. This morning somebody posted one of those ‘u ejja come on these things are forgotten’ comments. It wasn’t rude or anything, but it was just so damned stupid that I pressed the delete button in annoyance, not having had my tea yet. And I thought, this person really doesn’t know what he/she is talking about – either didn’t live through it or else has a brain like two marble in a tin-can. The sheer magnitude of what happened had just gone right over this person’s head.]
There are innumerable stories about fusellu – I am told that once he bumped into KZT’s mother walking her poodle at the Upper Barakka , picked the dog up and flung it over the bastions . Can someone verify this story ?
And perhaps Joseph Muscat can include Fusellu in the Storja glorjuza tal Partit Laburista exhibtion he just inaugurated.
[Daphne – I didn’t hear about that, but I’ll ask him. I would imagine that Joseph Muscat doesn’t even have a clue who Fusellu was. He’s not exactly clued up, is he? Maybe somebody should ask him live on television: “Eeeeeehhhhh, eeeeeh…..ahna partit miftuh ghal kullhadd.”]
And will Mr Justice Raymond Pace please enlighten us if he would be satisfied with Euro 186,000 compensation, for being framed and improsned for 3 years, a substantial time in solitary confinement !
The judiciary renders our country a banana republic. In my view it is more offensive than MEPA.
[Daphne – I know, I keep thinking of that poor kid being beaten up in solitary confinement, and wondering just how many people knew what was going on, and failed to make a fuss in the same way they did about Pietru Pawl Busuttil, perhaps because he was the sacrificial lamb so that the person who really opened the cell door and let those two go free would never be identified.]
@ Meerkat
What has this got to do with political inclination?
[Daphne – I’l explain: a normal, sane, clued-up person with no bitterness, prejudices, faith-blindness or hang-ups would never vote for a political party with a track record like this, which raises questions about the thinking of those who do. How do they justify it? A bit like voting for the Nazi Party and saying, oh, it’s changed….even if it has changed, for heaven’s sake….]
Does anyone think that modern politicians – on either side of the divide – could be as corrupt as they were in the 70s and 80s?
A few days back we (at work) were talking about the excesses of the old Labour ministers. Some of the guys experienced those dark days as woking adults, and some of the things they told me were straight out of a Mafia film…
[Daphne – Definitely not. I worked then and I am working now, and there is a world of difference. There was corruption at every damned level, from the lowest to the highest, and what was worse was how blatant it was. People queued at the import licence desk with tenners in between each copy of the licence application: and that was just to GET YOUR APPLICATION STAMPED! When Anglu Farrugia arraigned me on criminal charges for beating up a police officer twice my size and eight times my weight (I was 19) – after keeping me in solitary confinement – the clerk sitting beneath the magistrate’s podium asked each of us who were arraigned together to give him Lm3. He said it was a standard fee. We all paid him in full view of the magistrate, who saw the money being handed over and taken by this clerk. Not having had any experience of being arraigned, we all paid up without question, especially since the magistrate was watching. Then we found out that this particular clerk always took money from those arraigned, and that it was nothing but fraud and extortion. The lawyers all knew what was going on and nobody said or did anything about it. You even had to pay the clerks at the parcel post office in Valletta, near the Opera House ruins at that time, to go upstairs and bring down your parcel. I never had to do this, because the first time I went, I was left to wait for THREE HOURS for my parcel, which never arrived. A friend walked in and said – don’t you know you have to bribe them to get it? Just slip them a fiver. Instead, I burst down the supervisor’s door and gave him a banshee-bollocking. The parcel appeared in two minutes and I always got my parcels really quickly after that, because they were obviously afraid I was going to start screaming at them again. And of course, we all knew that we couldn’t file a report with the police or the ministry. What we learned best in those times is what it’s like to live in a country where there is no protection from abuse, and where those who are supposed to fight this abuse are the greatest abusers of all.]
Amanda Mallia Thursday, 30 October 1849hrs
Daphne – “The general consensus was that Louis Bartolo had done a great service to society.”
I remember Louis Bartolo walking into an insurance office where I once worked, probably in the early 1990s, introducing himself as “Jien dak li qtilt il-Fusellu”.
The young man who was about to assist him promptly stood up and shook his hand. His gesture was representative of the feelings of many who had born the brunt of Fusellu’s behaviour. It just goes to show to what dire straits we had been reduced, that we saw murder as salvation.
I agree without any reservations whatsoever and I personally know two people who behaved exactly in the same manner as that insurance clerk you cite.
Daphne, correct me if I’m erring, but wasn’t this Fusellu guy the one who, with others, gave fire to The Times? Sending poor Mabel Strickland in a 3-months’ depression.
[Daphne – Not that I know of.]
The full list of Fusellu’s crimes would require a pooling of collective national resources, I would think.
Daphne, not sure what you mean that i can fill in any details on the Joe Psaila rehabilitation. To be honest I can’t. All I know is that former Police Comissioner Lawrence Pullicino is about the only public official to have ever been convicted of human rights abuses perpetrated under the Mintoff regime. As for the rest… they all got off scot free, and some were even promoted.
It is worth pointing out also that the permanent commission against corruption permanently looked the other way when all the ministers mentioned in comments above – Holland, Sant, etc. – quietly passed on without ever facing court proceedings. As for Lorry Sant, he was even offered a Presidential pardon… which is more than Harry Vassallo got for his VAT problems.
Quite frankly I think we’re all looking through the situation through the wrong end of the telescope. There has been a virtually uninterrupted Nationalist government since 1987, and let’s face it: it was not in Eddie Fenech Adami’s interest to pursue any of those cases. I think we should be asking ourselves why.
[Daphne – Didn’t Malta Today run a story on Joe Psaila a couple of months ago? I believe so, because one of your reporters called me.]
Meerkat – “How can anyone be a Laburist? It is beyond my comprehension.”
And the ones who claim they have “changed” are purely opportunists
Anthony – “I am worried about really “young” Maltese who have had it so good that they are rather sceptical when confronted with details of these torrid times in our recent past.”
Rest assured that the children of people of my generation (my own young children included) have been / will be brought up knowing the truth of what life was like when we were their age. Hopefully, they’ll appreciate how lucky they are now. I know that my children already do.
These horror stories are all part of the human rights record for which Mintoff was awarded a prize.
[Daphne – Yes, which is why he got it from Gaddafi.]
So after all these years the Mifsud case which happened during the Mintoff regime had to be concluded during the same week in which Dom Mintoff was declared by Libya as the icon of Human Rights! X’ironija!!!!
This is the intrepid KZT! Just read through the comments. To put the record straight, John Bondin k/a Fusellu never met my Ma at the Upper Barrakka ( mummy is not a Barrakka sort of girl, more the Ghar id -Dud type ) nor did he chuck her poodle (it was a West Highland by the way, I still get very miffed when the late Casper is referred to as a poodle) over the bastions.
David S may have heard the story how my mother was mugged on on a Saturday afternoon at the bottom of Ghar id Dud Street in front of three policemen and crowds of people some time in the early 80s. The late Mr Bondin was not involved but apparently the guys who thought (wrongly) that my mother was a soft target were ‘untouchables’ and not of the Indian sort either. Therefore they could not be prosecuted because nobody would dare be a witness; not even the police. The case never happened……..however……three of four months later I was summoned to the Sliema Police Station ( in those days I used to work at the bank in Manwel Dimech Street, and was ushered into the Surgent’s office and offered a cuppa. En passant I was informed that ” dawk l-irgiel li aggredewlek il-mama, zellqu fil-bitha tad-Depot”! That was the kind of justice that was meted out in those dark days when these dinosaurs ruled the earth……………!
O Tempora O Mores
Also for the record as it seems that although it is said that ‘de mortibus non nisi malo’ and all that Mr Bondin alias Fusellu had struck up a chummy relationship with me way before that when I was a cashier in Floriana Branch. The only thing was that I hadn’t the foggiest who he was and when he was eventually killed and his photograph was bandied everywhere I was so astonished that you could have knocked me down by just blowing very softly…………..
what blasts from the past! Just proves that Sicily is only 60 miles away……………..
@ Daphne ” All I know is that former Police Comissioner Lawrence Pullicino is about the only public official to have ever been convicted of human rights abuses perpetrated under the Mintoff regime. As for the rest… they all got off scot free, and some were even promoted”
A certain police seargant once grabbed two of my schoolmates, just 15 years of age,totally innocent and naive, slapped them round the head and threw them into the police-lockup overnight, just because he found a scratch on his car and wanted to blame someone. Innexplicably this same police seargent is now our police commissioner. Go figure! So much for justice.
Oh I see, thank you for that pearl of wisdom. Is that what you call rational?
[Daphne – I’m extremely rational, thank you.]
[Daphne – Yes.]
If you really intend to write a book, I could do the bit on Mintoff’s “international relations”. You know, interview some foreigners with interesting stories to tell, who knew far more about what was going on than the locals. Or we could make a movie, like Werner Herzog’s brilliant “Echoes from a sombre empire.”
I feel so sorry for Anthony Mifsud. In my opinion NOTHING can make it better! I think that the police officers who were involved in this horrific story, apart from paying “some money”, should be put in solitary confinement for a year. They sure deserve it! If this were to really happen, it would still be no comparison to the hell they put Anthony through!
Daphne,
I am quite new to your website having started reading your ‘diary’ over the past few months.
First of all I’d like to thank you for reminding people of what went on in Malta in the VERY RECENT past. More importantly for making the younger generation such as myself aware of the Malta we were born into (I was born in 1983). I am opposed to those who tell you that by doing so, you are stirring things up and instilling more anger into people which is best left dormant. You are right to speak out, make yourself heard, after all, most of the people involved in all you describe are still active today. So how can we just forget?
Secondly, I’d like to join the rest in expressing my sorrow for Anthony Mifsud and all that he experienced, being reduced to a state of 60-something % permanent disability (as declared by his doctor on Xarabank) and being awarded a sum of money for it which only God-knows-when he’ll be granted.
An avid reader,
Daniela
louis bartolo was my uncle and he was a great man and a fair man he was a man amongst men i was there the day it happened i was 12 years old and held in custody for 4 weeks. my nana was on medication and they would not give it to her infact anyone who knew my uncle was bought in it was us or them that day and i thank him for me being here today
You are all wrong..fusello was not dead on the spot. i was a press photographer at that time. i managed to slip into his hospital room where he was lying on his dead bed.i managed to take 2 photos of him . one of the photos it shows that he was smiling and the other he was not. so that means he was not dead yet.the editor was very angry because i showed him a smiling dying man, luckily i had a another photo. SO HE WAS NOT SHOT DEAD.