The persecution of Chris Engerer, father to Cyrus: the facts, for those who still believe that facts are important
Chris Engerer (left) with his son Cyrus, Cyrus’s boyfriend and government aide Randolph Debattista, and Cyrus’s mother Mariuccia Engerer. Photograph available publicly on Cyrus Engerer’s Facebook.
Asst Commissioner Neil Harrison, head of the drug squad, who acted to apprehend and arrest Chris Engerer on the basis of a reliable report he received – seen here with his wife Audrey Harrison, who featured prominently in the Labour Party’s electoral campaign last year, on billboards, campaign flyers and in person.
Those who believe the propaganda that Chris Engerer was apprehended, searched and arrested on drugs-related charges because his son Cyrus had left the Nationalist Party and joined Labour must also believe that Assistant Commissioner Neil Harrison, head of the Drug Squad, who took the report and acted on it, is an agent of the Nationalist Party.
He isn’t. Just 18 months later, his wife Audrey Harrison was one of the most prominent faces on the Labour Party’s campaign billboards, and spoke at Labour Party meetings to round up the Labour vote.
This is an illustration of just how deceitful the Labour leader and his sidekick Cyrus have been with their propaganda. They definitely know and knew that it was Audrey Harrison’s husband who acted to search and arrest Chris Engerer on the basis of a confidential report he received from one of his sources – a source who, he said, wished to remain anonymous but who is known to him and who is reliable.
It is unlikely that other Labour politicians and Labour journalists bothered to find out that it was Neil Harrison, so I believe they have been repeating the propaganda mindlessly as distinct from deliberately deceitfully.
The head of the Drug Squad is not only married to a prominent Labour billboard star, meaning that there is no way on earth he can be described as being a party to illicit persecution of Chris Engerer by the PN, but more to the point, he was doing his job as he was in duty bound to do.
My only criticism is that I find it inconceivable that the head of the Drug Squad had to look up Chris Engerer on the police database to find out who he is and whether he has a record – only to find that he has a record dating back to the early 1980s, for heroin and not just marijuana.
Chris Engerer is notorious for his involvement over several decades in drug-related activity. The head of the Drug Squad addresses this when confronted by the Board of Inquiry by saying that he can’t possibly know everything and depends on informants.
Yes, it’s true that something a large group of people take for granted as public knowledge may in actual fact be just group knowledge. The reason I think that everyone knows about Chris Engerer of the old beach bar at Exiles (not the Exiles restaurant or waterpolo club) being a junkie-cum-dealer-cum-pothead-dealer-forever is because I lived in that part Sliema until I was 26. But I would have no idea who the equivalent go-to person for marijuana and heroin (at the time he dealt in heroin, as the police records confirm) would have been in, say, Birzebbuga.
Do you know what upsets me most about all this? I can just about get my head around the prime minister lionising somebody who has been given a jail sentence of two years for a vindictive act against an ex lover (I can’t, but let’s say I can), but the fact that the Maltese prime minister has publicly defended a notorious marijuana dealer with a history of dealing in heroin truly disturbs me.
If Joseph Muscat were just your typical village nerd who grew up in a repressive, cut-off environment and who now thinks that championing a drug-user/dealer makes him cool and ‘liberal’, it could almost be forgiven. But he is not just that. He is the prime minister, and his desire to gain votes from user-dealers like Chris Engerer and their mainly teenage/20s customers should not over-ride his sense of responsibility as the head of government and, on a personal level, a parent of two children who will soon be that age themselves.
You only have to look at Chris Engerer’s police record, shown here, to see that he used heroin and sold it throughout Cyrus’s (b. 1981) childhood, or at least the first big and crucial chunk of it. If the prime minister thinks that a splendid example to hold up for our admiration as a victim of persecution, he can keep it. If I can spell things out more clearly, just in case the prime minister still doesn’t get it, when Cyrus was exactly the same age as the prime minister’s twins, his father was wasted on heroin and when he wasn’t wasted, he was selling it. What a fantastic father, and how very responsible.
You can imagine how much he gave a damn about other people’s children.
Here are the relevant excerpts from the Board of Inquiry report into the apprehension, search and arrest of Chris Engerer, signed off by retired Judge Albert Manche.
21 Comments Comment
Reply to Edward Click here to cancel reply
This is also why Muscat has no qualms to legalise marijuana. This man has no moral compass.
Shame on the Prime Minister,his ministers, his parliamentary secretaries and his backbenchers.
I’m sure Jo and Dalli won’t let a little thing like the truth get in their way.
Doesn’t a civil servant have to have a clean police conduct certificate in order to be employed by the state? The fact that he has a suspended sentence still makes him guilty and therefore he has a blemish on his police conduct. Would that be correct?
[Daphne – The thing is that Cyrus Engerer is not a civil servant. His is a political appointment to a private secretariat. When this term of government ends, his job ends with it, though if Labour is re-elected he will be re-appointed.]
Not all civil servants, certain people have been recruited having a criminal record. PQ please!
I am so glad you put a face to Chris Engerer. I often see him walking up and down the Sliema front.
Malta is indeed a sad and sorry place – how can people tolerate Joseph Muscat’s lies and low standards. This is totally unacceptable from any man let alone him.
Is it possible that the PL had Chris Engerer searched in order to blame the PN for it? A sort of false flag operation?
It all kicked-off in 2011, Edward. Labour still not in power then.
That’s what you think, Mr Ripard. Labour had been infiltrating government entities for five years. Slowly but surely. Trust me.
I do not know if this had any bearing on this case though. I cannot say. Probably not, as it seems that the procedure was followed correctly.
@ Neo
“Labour had been infiltrating government entities for five years. Slowly but surely.”
Agree with you there. Not only Government entities, but others too.
According to The Times of Malta, on being asked if she received any order from the Prime Minister to remove Mr Engerer from his job, replied ““As if….of course not!”.
Is she not the one who at a House Committee tried to ridicule PN member Dr Joseph Cassar and had the cheek to deny it though she was in full view of the cameras?
The Labour Party has apparently become a drug dealers’ haven.
We knew it before the general elections with their “blokka silg” episode, and it continued with the John Dalli affair and now this allegiance with Cyrus and Chriss Engerer.
Way to go, Jo. Keep it up and the higher it goes the bigger the fall.
I wonder if you will be happy with your daughters associating with these kinds of people. If you really care about them you should set a better example.
Do you remember how lightly Joseph Muscat took the issue of “blokka silg”?
Under a Nationalist government each and every person proposed by a Minister or Parliamentary Secretary (from Chief of Staff to messengers and drivers) for engagement to his or her Private Secretariat had to undergo a security check with the Police Force before the appointment was approved by the Prime Minister.
I recall a good few cases where this check revealed convictions, which meant that the appointment was immediately dismissed.
Anything drug-related, for example, meant that the proposed engagement stopped before it even started.
In cases where an act was committed several years before, was a first offence, did not involve a jail sentence (suspended or otherwise) and by its nature did not demonstrate a predisposition to deceit or criminal intent, then such individuals were assessed on a case by case basis.
I am referring here to situations similar to that of Claudio Grech given that a ridiculous attempt was made to equate his case with that of Mr Engerer.
All in all, under the previous government there was an awareness that we were dealing here with ‘positions of trust’, and that therefore the integrity and reliability of persons appointed to these positions had to be assured. This lot are making an absolute mockery of this principle.
I also must add that the previous government also required that the overall majority of staff in Private Secretariats were public officers.
A few other posts were made available to employees of public sector organisations. However, part from the drivers who could be sourced from outside the Public Service or the public sector, only three officers could be appointed from outside the Government.
U il-kbir ghadu gej!
Oh by the way.
Chris Engerer’s place is called ‘Paradise Bar’, you know like ‘stairway to heaven’ stuff – how very appropriate.
Now guess who ‘Puff’ the Magic Dragon is.
Cannabis/Cheech and Chong-the reefer song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqi6eRD8vyQ
You forgot to mention that Harrison now works in the same building minister fat Harry works. He is his assistant on visa issues.
Joseph Muscat’s behaviour is typical “nerd grown up and in power” behaviour: let’s please all the “cool” people (the gays, marijuana users, Lou Bondi…) so perhaps I can look cool by association and be accepted by society.
I would differentiate between nerd and rebel hamallu.
Nerds play by the rules. They learn the rules, play the game by the rules and any game they play will be played well.
The rebel hamallu doesn’t play any game by the rules because he’s not really interested in playing the game but in cheating the game.
They will never play the game well: any game.
As Joseph Muscat explained at St. Aloysius – he thought it was clever: When he forgot his “undervest” (Rule 1), he went to his friend’s house and saved himself the journey back home, plus the cost of it.
The truth is: he wasted both time, effort and lesson input by “not playing the game by the rules.”
It was true then, and it’s just as true now.
Give me a nerd who plays by the rules any time. Rebels end up chasing their tails and not playing any game well.
Nerds and geeks are actually an aspiration within that context. It’s the full knowledge of the rules that take them forward.
It’s the precision that they can apply in the preparation they know they need to have which supplies the advantage over the rebel: whether hamallu or cool.
“Why not” does add spice, but that’s not how one runs a country where people’s lives are dependent on responsible choices of Government.