Not to worry, albona. Probably, Premier Joseph will be signing one with China or North Korea very soon indeed – just like his idol Mintoff did.

You have right to refuse and be taken to hospital and x-rayed. Cavity searches are physically intrusive and should be done by a medical professional. You can refuse it, it is your right. I know because I did.

Also, fitness tests need to be linked to wage incentives.

I too have been the victim of police abuse. All because I made an official complaint about abuse. The case was thrown out by the judge the minute he realised the officers were committing perjury, although he stopped short of saying as much.

There were four charges, all lies. It caused me and my family strife, sleepless nights, lost days of leave of absence from work, not to mention the money – close to €1000. Of course the police incurred zero costs even though they lost. That is not fair at all.

They were proven to be in the wrong, yet I was still the financial loser.

The Nationalist government did virtually nothing to reform the police force during their time at the helm. Nor did they help me at all in my case. That was the one big failure of the PN’s time in office: not reforming the police force.

Now I’d had a few on the plane so I was feeling over confident and said no chance and sat on floor.

The two women police constables went on to intimidate, verbally abuse me and ransack my cases. They held me for four hours claiming it was just a random search and that I was a ‘kiesha’.

“Mela tahseb li ghandek xi haga specjali hemm isfel jew?” whilst snapping at their rubber gloves.

I refused numerous times and asked, as is my right, to go to hospital and get myself X-rayed. Eventually their superior turned up, totally unamused and sent me home. The spiteful, bored bitches didn’t get to humiliate me. l would have called that sexual assault.

People need to be made aware that of their right, even with the police, to say no.

This was just after the old opera house ruins on the way out of Valletta, on the same day that the young Mifsud Bonnici was also beaten up by the Police and hospitalised.

It’s very simple, Marie.

It’s not necessarily how smart the cats were/are, it is how they are trained and disciplined.

I may be a bit older than you, maybe quite a bit, and I remember the days when if one went to a police station to complain about someone, the sergeant would ask you to write your name down on the report sheet and the name of the person you were complaining about, memorize your complaint and when someone was available and literate enough, he would write out the complaint for him.

If someone is complaining about Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici who, may I remind you, had a serious health problem during the time he was in charge of the police force, then how do you expect that Manwel Mallia would not be criticized?

What you should be asking is why, all of a sudden, these incidents have become more frequent? One of the first was the abuse of power by Peter Paul Zammit himself, freshly appointed Commissioner of Police and proceeding against a passport control officer at the airport who was falsely accused of (not) taking a picture of Manuel Mallia’s communications coordinator and Joseph Muscat’s spokesman.

The Commissioner of Police himself conducted the defence on behalf of the police and got a major dressing-down from the magistrate who ruled that the police ‘conducted their investigation in a most unprofessional manner with a clear abuse of its powers’.

For defendants and those who follow court cases where the police are involved, they will know that police officers commit perjury when giving witness. This is an open secret and despite it being a criminal offence no judiciary takes steps to hold accountable those committing perjury.

In the case of these two tourists the police have confirmed to the international community how arrogant, incompetent, badly trained and evil some of them are.

I would not be surprised that the officers involved will be protected or get away with just a slap on the wrist. They may also say that they had their character tarnished unjustly and want to clear their name. All this when it is more than evident that they are in the wrong and have damaged Malta’s reputation because of their behaviour.

http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/court_and_police/38852/daewoo_accountant_describes_1999_police_interrogation_to_court#.U7gSjvRDt8E

http://ec-eu-john-dalli.blogspot.co.uk/p/inspector-raymond-cremona-his-biased_26.html

http://ec-eu-john-dalli.blogspot.co.uk/p/michael-cassar-ass-police-commissioner.html

The Malta Independent does not name the police officer, it refers to him as sergeant major. Why did the journalist not try to get his name? That is a lousy court report.