[Daphne – Obviously, that’s what always happens, given that newsrooms appear to see no value in following stories up. Look at how the Anthony Zammit ‘robbery and assault’ fell into a vacuum. Everybody suspects by now that it wasn’t quite what he said it was, but is anyone going to follow it up?]

[Daphne – That’s what is taxing us all. And if it turned to soap afterwards, it’s going to be very difficult for the police to come out with a statement about it (“We messed up.”). They messed up either way you look at it, but nobody’s speaking.]

[Daphne – Yes, it was.]

But going back to the ”soap” business, the intention was NOT to evade VAT, but to import drugs. And that is conspiracy to commit a crime, regardless of whether the traffickers were themselves screwed by the suppliers or not.

[Daphne – No, actually I seem to remember that the reasoning was different entirely: that the son used his father’s position to obtain information. Given that Malta has no wars to contend with, and there were no ‘boat people’ at the time, one of the chief duties of the army was assisting the police in drug-related operations. The brigadier’s position was further compromised when it emerged that his son had transferred a kilo of cocaine to his sister in the brigadier’s house on at least one occasion. And negotiating kilos of cocaine is not ‘drug-pushing’. Pushers are those who sell direct to users.]

I used to work as a paramedic at the emergency department, and when patients were admitted, especially unconscious, we used to take off their jewelry and put it in an envelope and send it to the almoner’ s secure lockable safe.

The procedure was that on the envelope we wrote the name of the patient and a description of the items. The description normally would be ‘yellow metal’ for gold, even if we were sure it was gold. This goes for any item description such as white powder and green soap. If a patient was admitted with a green soap, even if it smelled like pot and you were convinced that the odour was that of cannabis and you had a dog sniffing jumping up and down and you were 100% certain that it was cannabis and not soap, you would still write ‘green soap’ and send it to the almoner’s office for safe keeping. And if this safe is as safe as the court’s strong-room eventually the green soap will turn very soapy……

[Daphne – Funny, but you’re not the first person to suggest that the haul turned into soap somewhere between Migral-Ferha and the inspection by the court expert. I suppose we find it hard to understand how members of the Vice Squad can make a mistake like this.]