Drug-dealing murderers in the Mario Camilleri/Matthew Zahra case used to meet at the Birzebbuga Labour Party club

Published: June 7, 2014 at 12:59pm

ronald urry

I’ve been meaning to write about this since the court hearing in the murder case a month ago, but it just got stacked up with a backlog of stuff.

One of the first things I had noted about Ronald Urry, one of the men being prosecuted for murder in the Matthew Zahra/Mario Camilleri father and son/cocaine case, was that he boasted on Facebook that he is ‘proud to vote Labour’ and that his mere 53 Facebook friends include key Labour figures.

But I said nothing about it at the time because, while my obvious reaction was ‘that really figures’, mass political parties really cannot help the kind of individuals they attract. Well, they can – and there are reasons why members of the criminal underclass support the Labour Party, but they are generally to do with family history, the fact that Labour has historically been a magnet for the underclass, and the other fact that much of the worst violent crime comes out of the underclass.

Interestingly, this isn’t a matter of the underclass, either – Malta’s socially smartest cocaine dealers, like Meinrad Calleja (who spent 15 years in prison in Malta for cocaine-trafficking and some time in prison in Rome for the same crime when he was still in his 20s) and their families also vote Labour and are vocal about it. Cocaine-trafficker and convict Meinrad Calleja’s father, Maurice, a brigadier who had to resign because his own son was moving kilos of cocaine about under his nose in his own house when he was the army’s commanding officer, was in fact one of this government’s first appointees: to a board to review ‘complaints’ from soldiers.

I mention this in passing because I find the phenomenon interesting. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Do the same personality traits and reasoning which attract certain individuals to cocaine trafficking also attract them to Labour?

Then it emerged from testimony in court that the men involved in the murder of Matthew Zahra and the two Camilleris used to meet socially at a Labour Party club, and that this is where they planned how to get rid of the bodies. So then the matter took on a different aspect. This was no longer a matter of murderers/cocaine dealers supporting Labour and the Labour Party being unable to help that and not being responsible for their choice.

Now this was a matter of murder/body disposal planning meetings actually taking place at a Labour Party club. The Labour Party must have known that these are a bunch of no-goods and still they were permitted to hang about there.

This kind of thing throws new light on the scandal that disappeared like a blip in the chaos of the general election campaign, when Labour deputy leader Toni Abela was covertly recorded talking about a block of what was obviously cocaine being carved up in the kitchen of a Labour Party club, and how it was disposed of instead of the police being brought in (to avoid trouble for Labour and for the individuals involved).

That was the Hal Safi Labour club. The murderers/cocaine dealers met at the Birzebbuga Labour club. See the newspaper report below.

————

(…)

“On 14 August 2012, Jason offered me €2,000 to get rid of the body of Matthew Zahra. We used to meet at the Birzebbugia Labour club. From the money he owed me, I only got €400. At around 6:30am he arrived at my field with Renald (Ronald Urry), who hid under a fig tree next to the gate. Later, Jason arrived with Matthew Zahra in a white Skoda, and Renald shot him inside the car, then drove to the hole and dumped the body.”

(…)

Attard said he entered into a second agreement with Jason Galea, even though he had still not been paid for the first burial. He also confirmed that he used to live and sleep on the farm where he had hidden the bodies.

“One evening I returned to the farm after having a couple of beers at the Labour club and found my field swarming with police. They kept me off the field but when I told them I was the owner they escorted me inside. I knew I was in trouble because I saw them digging up the bodies of the two Camilleris.”

(…)




14 Comments Comment

  1. Banana republic ... again says:

    When the party’s top brass close an eye or two to save their own skin and that of certain individuals caught dealing cocaine in a Labour Party club, they send out a message of tolerance to criminal activity of this nature.

    And so of course criminals feel at home there.

    • etil says:

      Of course they feel at home. The PL has shown clearly that it sides with people who the law courts have convicted – vide Cyrus Engerer and now the judge, and the list will go on. In this way criminals know where to go for support.

  2. Joe Fenech says:

    Unfortunately many Labour people confuse ‘underclass’ with ‘someone from a working class/lower middle-class background’ so on the net you see all sorts of wacky rationalisations as to why so many people are still clad in ignorance and uncouthness when the common reasons are attitude and a sense of entitlement.

    This insulting mindset irks me. Are these people aware how people who grew up in Malta 65/70 years ago had to work their socks off to survive, let alone succeed or set up a business in another country?

    • ken il malti says:

      Ignorance and uncouthness have to do with IQ level.

      IQ levels have to do with genetics and a bit of the “luck of the draw”.

      If these “underclass people” were never born, it would be a glorious thing for them and especially us and society in general.

  3. My distancing myself from the MLP, of which I was never a member, though in the 1930s my father, attracted by the social polices that its original leaders espoused was, began when my father told me of his disapproval of the subtle bullying methods used by Mintoff’s supporters to oust Dr Paul Boffa.

    These methods became quite brutal as time passed, and the MLP came to power. It was only during the brief period of Alfred Sant’s premiership was there any effort to stem this cancer, though the treatment of imprisoned former Commissioner of Police, Lawrence Pullicino, contradicted this trend.

    In my mind there is no doubt that Joseph Muscat’s invitation to the “old-timers” to come back, their welcome and appointment to prominent posts, as well as the known criminal activities that have taken place in recent years in MLP/LP clubs is a very serious step backwards.

    I cannot understand how any right-thinking person could ignore, excuse or support this move in this party now called a movement.

    • Kevin says:

      The problem with your thinking (and mine as well as a number of other people reading this blog) is that we stick to a certain moral and ethical code.

      This is why you “cannot understand how any right-thinking person could ignore, excuse or support this move in this party.”

      Once you waiver those very ethics and morals that we hold dear, you have Muscat and the regression to the violent and criminal past. In a sense, this is why there is so much opposition to the slogan “religio et patria.”

      I firmly believe that religion has no place in a secular state (I have read many of your comments over the years and I am sure you will disagree with me on this part). However I do not make mistake in removing religion and leaving a moral gap (at least we’ll probably agree on this).

      Something else more sinister usually springs to fill in the gap as a value system. (It is not atheism that is the problem but immorality and amorality).

      In Labour’s case it is Muscat, the movement, positive energy and what have you. None of that is moral.

      • Francis Saliba M.D. says:

        There is nothing wrong in having a moral, ethical code and sticking to it. Things must have come to a pretty pass if in Malta that is considered a “problem” so much so that our prime minister brashly grants “waivers” from observing ministerial parliamentary and medical ethics.

      • Your comment does not touch the essential point in my last sentence. I am speaking of “right-thinking” persons. Do you consider any person who ignores, condones or support violence in the pursuit of his political aims as a right-thinking person? For your information I can well understand why non-right-thinking persons do embrace violence.

  4. Disgusted says:

    To unashamedly pinch an argument by Richard Dawkins about the chicken and egg conundrum, ‘criminality is Labour’s way of perpetuating the underclass and, thus, a certain way of life that guarantees the Labour vote.’

    Why else would Muscat continue in his shady dealings, open Maltese citizenship to all and sundry, and maintain the argument for decriminalising drugs.

    • curious says:

      There are many reasons why Muscat pursues the shady dealings you describe.

      First of all it has to be within your character to do so. Can you imagine Fenech Adami taking certain shameful decisions that Muscat took during the past year? Certainly not.

      There is one more important factor that should never be left out when dealing with Muscat. It has got nothing to do with the Labour Party or the good of the country. The man is so full of himself. It is ALL about him. He wants to be admired for things which others never did or dreamt of doing. It is a case of the end justifies the means.

      To accomplish this, he needs to be in power and therefore the need to placate people in return for votes.

      • Disgusted says:

        You are right about Muscat as the individual.

        I was trying to summarise the entire history of the Labour party since Mintoff.

        Mine was an academic exercise, at the group level of analysis, aimed at describing the patterns of behaviour of the Labour Party over a long period of time. Muscat is the fruit of those patterns of behaviour and a means to transmit and reinforce them.

        Muscat is not possible without the Labour Party behaviour.

  5. Francis Saliba M.D. says:

    Ighdli ma min taghmilha u nghidlek x’int! (Tr: Tell me whose company you keep and I will tell you what you are)

  6. gaetano pace says:

    Reference was made to Tony Abela who at election time was in charge of the Labour Party Clubs. Like Mallia, Abela has a practice in the Criminal Courts and his clients are well known. Certain names carried in the post above are landmarks within the corridors of our Criminal Courts.

    How could such an established, renowned criminal lawyer have let the names slip his attention? I do know the answer of his boss Joe: “U x`fijjjjaaaa din?”

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