UPDATED WITH FUSELLU AND MINTOFF PIC – Now here’s another one: this one’s about Mintoff and Il-Fusellu
Other than Lorry Sant, who had the means of blackmail, the only man Dom Mintoff couldn’t control was John Bondin, known as Il-Fusellu.
He was a fixture of Sliema life, making the Cafe Roma near il-Pjazzetta his unofficial HQ and driving around in a cream Rolls Royce which he parked on the pavement outside. He was small, skinny and dark, with slicked-back hair.
He was also the go-to man if you wanted anything from the government, like import licences, quotas, permits, a channel for bribery, whatever.
He was more powerful than any minister in the cabinet (except Lorry Sant, of course) and they were all terrified of him. When he was shot dead by a man called Louis Bartolo, who accused him of harassing his wife, outside a house in St Julian’s, the Labour government treated the death as something of national importance, and a catastrophe.
Though Il-Fusellu was brain-dead, they ordered that his body be kept hooked up to machinery, and then they had themselves filmed at his hospital bedside for the national news on Xandir Malta television.
Yes, you heard right. Cabinet ministers sitting at a dead thug’s bedside and pretending that he was alive.
The reason is that he had so much over most of them, and probably held so much for many of them, too.
His wife’s accountants later advertised in the newspapers for information on the whereabouts of many of his possessions, including his cars.
Il-Fusellu’s mother was Dom Mintoff’s maid. Super One interviewed her among the mourners standing at Mintoff’s gate a few days ago: “Jien kont nahdem mieghu ghal hafna snin, bhala seftura”.
I bet the reporter didn’t have a clue who she is, or that her son was one of the most notorious figures of the late 1970s and 1970s.
Mintoff didn’t pay Mrs Bondin for her services. Instead he fixed things so that her husband would be sent abroad for medical treatment – you know, as a personal favour and not because we have a reciprocal health agreement with Britain, and found a job for him when he got back.
And an indebted Mrs Bondin skivvied for him in return.
I’ll leave the source of Il-Fusellu’s power over Dom Mintoff to your imagination. There really is no need to spell things out.
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Several rumours had it that il-Fusellu was Mintoff’s son
Rather than putting il-Fusellu on life-saving equipment and taking a photograph with him, those Cabinet Ministers should have carried out DNA tests on him. Had they done so, we would have had a Cabinet full of Lorry Sants, and Mintoff their poodle.
I don’t think it existed back then…
Every time I see the face of Mintoff I still get an attack of psychotic neurosis. Impulsively the most offensive Maltese word ‘l*ba’ comes to mind.
Mela bhal dik il kelba ommok kurnut faxxist
From a Times of Malta report about il-Fusellu’s funeral:
“The funeral was attended by the Speaker of the House of representatives, Mr K Agius, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, customs and People’s Financial Investments, Dr J Cassar, Cabinet Ministers, Labour Members of Parliament, Dr C Mifsud Bonnici, Deputy Leader of the MLP, members of the Party’s Executive committe and officials from the Labour Party and the General Workers Union. Mr Mintoff sent a wreath.”
That bears repeating: MR MINTOFF SENT A WREATH to the funeral of one of Malta’s most notorious thugs.
I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall a photo of Fusellu’s coffin being carried by cabinet ministers (as pall bearers).
What about this Hon. Consul in Poland, Kysryna-Maria Mikulanka? Interesting story in today´s Times of Malta ……
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120827/local/-He-didn-t-know-he-would-miss-Moira-so-much-.434491
Well that explains who found the photos and how they ended up at Lorry Sant .
Maybe it was a menage-a-trois, and that’s how they ended up at Lorry Sant.
Was he his father?
[Daphne – They are both dead, so we shall never know.]
DNA can be done on the dead but you know that already .
He was murdered by a PN supporter who happened to have the Gzira PN club, who also managed to escape from prison and only returned when PN were in power.
[Daphne – Oh Anna! You missed out the bit where your beloved government TORTURED the prison guard on duty that night, who was little more than a boy in his 20s, following which he suffered permanent psychological damage and had his entire life ruined. His name was Anthony Mifsud. Does that ring any bells?]
I m sure FUSELLU wasn t murdered because he was one of those that ransacked EFA s home and the Curia.
[Daphne – No, Anna. He was shot dead at Il-Qaliet where he had gone to make a pass at Mrs Louis Bartolo. Louis Bartolo did not take kindly to this sort of behaviour, which he might have learned at Mintoff’s knee, and instead of roughing him up as one Mintoff did to another, he shot him. But I find it interesting to see that you acknowledge Fusellu for the damage he did and what he was, and yet still vote for the people who made him possible.]
He was a thug just like the thugs surronding Austin Gatt . The ones that were outside the HQ in Pieta a few weeks ago stopping JPO s bodyguards from going in ..
[Daphne – Indeed, Anna. People like you will look for any excuse to justify your perverse reasoning. The thugs around Labour ministers were nothing like the men ‘around Austin Gatt’, and I speak from somebody who experienced most of those thugs at some point or other, given that I went to most anti-government demonstrations, even to a demonstration in favour of bats in some cave somewhere. As long as it was against THEM I went.]
Anna, pray tell, why the hell would JPO’s bodyguards have to enter PN HQ with him?
Fusellu had also threatened to harm Louis Bartolo’s young daughter.
When Bartolo turned up and confronted Fusellu, Fusellu moved to the boot of his car to draw out a weapon, and so Bartolo shot him in self-defence.
Mintoff’s government was anxious to obtain revenge on Bartolo for his action, and the police were ordered to shoot him on sight – that is, denying him his right to a fair trial.
After escaping from prison and staying on the run for six years, Bartolo subsequently turned himself in after the 1987 election, when he was tried and acquitted on justified grounds.
Ironically Daphne your Mintoff mentality of Jekk mhux maghna kontra taghna prevails you re assumming that I voted labour because I have a different opinion than yours.
[Daphne – Oh, so what are you, Anna, with your anti-PN views and your constant attacks on MY political views? AD, Norman Lowell, what? You come here to praise Labour and attack the Nationalist Party, so forgive me if I was mistaken in drawing the conclusion that you’re gearing up to vote for Joseph. At least you have the decency to use your own name, I’ll give you that.]
I m certain you believe the story of (messing about with his wife. )
[Daphne – It was his daughter, too, it turns out, and not just his wife. Yes, of course I believe it. I grew up in that part of Sliema where Il-Fusella headquartered himself. He was a permanent fixture of our life in the same way that the Zejtun thugs were for the people of Zejtun. He used sex and sexual assault to assert his dominance and authority. He made passes at girls in nightclubs and once pulled off a girl’s top on the dancefloor when she spurned him. Ma kienx jista jara dublett, and it wasn’t necessarily because he particularly fancied them either. What I remember most about him, actually, is that he was one of those short men who tried to make himself taller by standing ramrod straight and raising his shoulders and chin.]
I do remember Mifsud and believe me my heart went out to that boy when it happened.
What I would like to know is why the PN didn’t prosecute those responsible in 20 years in government.
[Daphne – The answer is that Eddie Fenech Adami made absolutely the wrong choice of minister for the police in the first instance. You can’t put a criminal lawyer in charge of the police. It just doesn’t work, and it didn’t work. I can’t say more than that without opening up an entire can of worms that has no resolution at this stage.]
Thugs are thugs whether they send bombs or shoot people.
The difference between you and I is that I call a spade a spade and you re still saying THEM which seems to always cloud your judgement.
[Daphne – You can accuse me of many things but certainly not of refusing or being unable to call a spade a spade, Anna. And I say ‘them’ because that is exactly what they are to me. And face it, THEY regard me as IT.]
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It seems that Mintoff had issues with all the Sant’s around him. In the Golden Years, he was blackmailed by his Minister Lorry Sant, and later, between 1996-1998, he blackmailed his Prime Minister Alfred Sant.
Should he ever become a Saint, the Church should bestow on him the name of Sant Duminku Mintoff.
Din għal min irid jiffriska ftit il-memorja tiegħu dwar l-istat tal-biki li fih kien pajjiżna fis-“Snin tad-Deheb” taħt it-tmexxija tal-Perit Duminku Mintoff.
http://www.illum.com.mt/2010/01/31/interview.html
Daphne, taf x’ ma semmejtx – il-gabbana barra il-bieb tal-Belt li hadet omm il-Fusellu, l-ewwel wahda li kien hemm.
The one everybody called “the milkvan / il-baqra”?
Mhux haditha, qabdet u ghamlitha hemm.
jien nahseb li insejt ritratt importanti hafna ghaziza Daphne…Insejt itella ir-ritratt sabih ta Eddie Feneck Adami ma Zeppi il-Hafi….Jekk int mara issa spjegalna xkienet ir relazzjoni bejn dawn it tnejn….U l-aktar haga li nixtieqek tispjegali hija ir raguni li EFA nizel min Prim biex lahhaq lili innifsu president u finalment jaghti Mahfra Presidenzjali lil zeppi il-hafi…
li sa fejn naf jien din kienet l unika mahfra presidenzjali li inghatat fuq atti kriminali kemm il PN ilom fil gvern…..
Bottom left, Danny Cremona, gidra prima klassi, famously seen yelling and gesturing at doctors outside the gates of St Luke’s hospital.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/97127026/BOV-s-first-Chairman-Danny-Cremona-Showing-Off-His-Banking-Credentials-at-the-Gates-of-St-Lukes-Hospital-tomarchive-19770604-009
Bottom right, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, the former PM who thinks Gaddafi was an arch-democrat and who’s still campaigning for Malta to leave the European union.
And what’s that in front of Joe Cassar? A saxophone?
Il-fusellu looked like a cheap Gaddafi ripoff – small, wiry, curly black hair and a domineering menacing presence.
And next to him do I spot Il-Qahbu?
Yes. That’s him.
Where are the Mintoffian apologists?
They are not writing anything about this blog. Their silence is deafening. This piece must have knocked them and sent them reeling.
I’m afraid that there are surely other, perhaps still unknown, ‘seeds’ of Mintoff among us. They should make themselves known. After all they are entitled to a piece of his large estate.
Does anyone know the details about the containers held up at Customs while Bondin was hooked up to “life-support” machinery while a lawyer (who shall remain nameless) withdrew those containers from Customs (but which containers did not make it to the Bondin heirs)?
I remember going to a circus at Manoel Island around December 1980, where Fusellu seemed to be calling the shots for some reason.
Fusellu’s participation in the gross income was a condition of all permits for such commercial activities.
I clearly remember one evening when along with friends we went to Tigulio (ex skating rink – don’t know what it is now) and witnessed Fusellu forcing a police officer (a sergeant I think he was) to perform oral sex on him just because he was politely asked not to cause trouble that evening because they were tired.
This he forced him to do with an automatic pistol pressed to his temple.
It’s true that this silence says a lot.
I was expecting a bunch of “foxx defni ja qahba liba” etc to be posted in the comments section of this article.
And then Labourites accuse the Nationalists of having selective memories.
U dak it-tlieta l-ohra fir-ritratt wara Mintoff tafu minn huma?
[Daphne -One of them is Il-Qahbu.]
I remember him at the Preluna wearing white clothes like Elvis. He used to put up his feet on the tables, and no matter who you are with he goes and make advance on your girlfriend.
When he died people who worked at the Preluna were relieved.
They were scared of him; he picked fights for nothing.
And if you recall, when louis Bartolo escaped from jail, the police commissioner issued notification on Xandir Malta that the police had instructions to shoot him on sight, and shoot to kill, not bring him down, even if unarmed.
Basically, they just wanted to avoid a trial and kill him like he killed their man Fusellu.
When Bartolo did eventually stand for trial, he was acquitted on grounds of self-defence. Fusellu had tried to kill him before he was killed himself.
Dak kien zmien tajjeb ukoll. Eddie, please note.
They look like a bunch of Mafia men and fixers.
[Daphne – Exactly. They were the Maltese mafia, led by Labour ministers and protected by the prime minister. It was beyond horrendous. No wonder the current generation of new Mintoffjani can’t even begin to get their heads around the facts and think we’re lying.]
The man next to il-Fusellu, standing behind Mintoff, is Edwin Bartolo, aka il-Qahbu, from Zejtun.
He was seated prominently at Mintoff’s state funeral, and walked next to Jason Micallef in the procession of mourners. During the last MEPs election he attacked and injured a Nationalist supporter in Zejtun. He was prosecuted and the case is still pending.
The wrong minister, this is definately not an answer I expected from you.
Why do you need to box me in ,Norman Lowel, that s really perceptive.
When exactly did I praise labour or Joseph Muscat?
Maybe someone should open that can of worms. I for one would love to know the truth for once..
I use my name because, frankly scarlet I don t give a damn
[Daphne – That’s a man’s line, Anna, not a woman’s (hence the Scarlett).]