Yes, Sir Arturo, it should be up to the courts to decide. But there first needs to be enough evidence for the police to press charges. In this case, the evidence suggests Silvio Zammit acted on his own device after being approached by the tobacco lobbyists (whose SOLE aim was to entrap Dalli).

You are all a naive lot, but do carry on as it has now become so amusing.

In your dreams.

I couldn’t give a monkey’s chuff about Maltese politics. All I know is that the day after OLAF grilled Zammit, there was a 15-minute telephone conversation between him and Dalli, during which Dalli wants us to believe they didn’t once mention the interrogation Zammit had the day before.

Of course you, like many other Maltese, believe every word Dalli says. Good luck.

http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2010-10-17/news/ellul-grech-requests-investigation-into-dallis-1999-accusations-281845/

An open letter to Prime Minister Dr Lawrence Gonzi
http://l-g-pm.blogspot.co.uk/

Shouldn’t it be up to the courts to decide whether there is enough evidence beyond reasonable doubt to convict John Dalli?

It is up to the Commissioner of Police to preempt the successive decisions of the magistrate in the compilation proceedings who declares that there is prima facie evidence against the person being investigated, the Attorney General when he draws up the bill of indictment and eventually, the court itself or the jury which decide whether a person is guilty or not.

It certainly should not be up to journalists, blog-writers and commentators to decide whether a person is guilty or not. The issue is rather whether a person should have been arraigned or not and it does not reflect well on the respect for the rule of law that a person has been left off the hook after a change in government which brought about a change in the police officials investigating him.

It is also bodes very badly that the Commissioner of Police himself acknowledged that there was a difference of opinion between him and Inspector Angelo Gafa, one of the most intelligent and respected officers in the corps, on whether arraignment should have taken place.

The Commissioner should have let the courts decide the issue and the fact that he did not points to factors extraneous to the objective merits of the case.

[Daphne – Governments do not have the power to put people behind bars. Courts of law do that.]