How recent events have proved the importance of reporting on “personal lives” in some cases

drug squad inspector Gabriel Micallef with his sister Dolcieann Farrugia (Micallef) who is in a relationship with Paul Sheehan. Both Paul Sheehan and Dolcieann are married to somebody else but estranged from their spouses.

Pawlu l-Machine Gun and drug squad nspector Gabriel Micallef with Paul Sheehan in the tunnel that night

Before everyone conveniently forgets or overlooks this fact, it was this website which had reported, in exhaustive detail just a few days after the shooting, the relationship between Mallia’s driver Paul Sheehan, drug squad inspector Gabriel Micallef, his sister Dolcieann Farrugia (Micallef) and their father Inspector Frans ‘Id-Devil’ Micallef.

This website was also the only one to report details of their ‘operation centre’: Ta’ Guzeppi Farmhouse, which is immediately adjacent to St Vincent de Paule Hospital, and which Inspector Frans Micallef somehow acquired on a policeman’s salary. He has been registered to that address since 2007.

It is not clear whether this is the same farmhouse which was at the centre of a major white-slave-trafficking scandal that led to a court judgement in 2004 ordering its confiscation after it was found that women were literally being held captive there – locked up in rooms with bread and water – and being forced to have sex with a parade of men.

The address of that farmhouse was 25, Triq L-Imgieret, but they seem to connect at the back.

It was also this website which conclusively identified the two men standing in the tunnel next to Paul Sheehan that night as Pawlu l-Machine Gun, Manuel Mallia’s other driver and a retired police constable who Mallia had reinstated into the corps, and Inspector Gabriel Micallef, who was off duty at the time.

The significance of the identity of these two men – especially Gabriel Micallef – and their presence there that night would have been missed entirely by the rest of the press without all the details reported earlier by this website on the relationship between them.

The press is also using the only available photograph of Gabriel Micallef, which is taken directly from this website. On the basis of a tip-off – her Facebook page was listed as ‘Dolcieann Mic’ and would have been difficult to identify otherwise – I downloaded that picture and several others just in time, because a couple of days later, when she realised that somebody was outside Ta’ Guzeppi Farmhouse taking pictures (she emerged angrily on the phone but couldn’t see them) she took down her Facebook page.

The greatest surprise I got on seeing that photograph – the original version contains all four siblings – was the shock of realisation that the smart and personable young photographer/architect and friend of the hip (or pseudo hip) set, who I have met on several photo-shoots, is their brother. Truly, you never who and what anyone is these days.

This episode illustrates how important it is – sometimes, how crucial – for the press to identify the links between people and to keep the public informed of relationships when this information becomes relevant. Six months ago, the information that one of Manuel Mallia’s drivers was in a relationship with drug squad inspector Gabriel Micallef’s sister would not have been newsworthy or even relevant to anything. But had the press had that information, it would have been able to make the links immediately between Gabriel Micallef and Paul Sheehan that night, and understand the significance of why Micallef was there when he wasn’t on duty (and when he works for the drug squad not the relevant police unit).

But hang on. This information would also have been relevant and newsworthy three months ago, in September, when all the newspapers reported the police press release and accompanying photo featuring a pleased acting commissioner Ray Zammit, that said Police Constable Paul Sheehan and Inspector Frans Micallef had been given a merit certificate for catching a young man who’d shot a stork “when they were off duty in Luqa”.

Had the press known at the time that Police Constable Paul Sheehan was actually Manuel Mallia’s driver, that Inspector Frans Micallef is his girlfriend’s father, and that the place where they ‘caught’ the hunter was the extensive garden of Frans Micallef’s farmhouse near St Vincent de Paule Hospital (he climbed in to get the stork) and that this is why the two were there together in that particular place at the time, the press would have had a very different story to report.

The headline, too, would have been different: POLICE MERIT CERTIFICATE FOR POLICE MINISTER’S DRIVER.