Stephen Smith is somebody Sheehan, the Police Commissioner and Mallia knew already
When it became known some days ago that Manuel Mallia’s driver Paul Sheehan had rung the police (at that stage, we didn’t know it was actually the Police Commissioner to whom he had spoken) to say that he had shot at Smith, we in the media were brought up short.
Ah, so it wasn’t some kind of drug (or similar) deal between the two of them, after all, because if it were, Sheehan wouldn’t have rung the police so blithely to tell them he had shot him.
Now that the transcript of those telephone conversations is out, and we know to whom Sheehan actually spoke and what he actually said, it’s back to the drawing-board with our original thesis, which is no longer a thesis but – on the basis of what was said – plain, bald fact. Sheehan knew Smith already. What we don’t know is the context in which he knew him.
It isn’t only Sheehan who knew Stephen Smith. The Police Commissioner Ray Zammit did too, and we already know that Mallia did too, because he was his client. But how did he know that it was Smith his client who being shot at?
The words which give Zammit away are easy to miss if you are speeding through the transcript. The Police Commissioner refers to Smith as “L-Iskocciz”: “L-Iskocciz huduh l-ghassa tal-Msida.”
L-Iskocciz?
One of the first questions I asked on this website two weeks ago when it happened was: why was Smith immediately referred to, the very night it happened, as a Scotsman? Where did that come from? Passports are British, not Scottish, and people identify themselves as British citizens, not Scottish nationals.
There is no reason on earth why the Police Commissioner would have referred to him as L-Iskocciz if he didn’t know exactly who they were talking about, and if this were not the way they habitually referred to him. As it is put in the vernacular, kienu isibuh bhala L-Iskocciz.
Smith was driving a car with UK plates, but when he got out of that car, he spoke to Sheehan in Maltese. And Sheehan responded in kind. He is heard, while still on the line with the police, telling Smith in Maltese (it’s right there in the transcript): “Ara ma tqumx ghax fuqek naħlih.”
Even when speaking English, Smith does not have a Scottish accent because he grew up in Malta and went to St Martin’s College. He has your typical Maltese mittilkless accent, not even a middle class one.
They knew him already. He was L-Iskocciz to them. And that is why he is now keeping a low profile and refuses to speak to the press, when if there was nothing untoward a man in his situation would be going wild with angry press interviews and seeking justice.
The realisation is beginning to dawn that in March 2013 Malta voted the criminal underworld and its agents into power. And now there is no way out. I felt it back then before the general election. I just couldn’t put my finger on the source of all the signs I was picking up that the ‘movement’ was driven by a force of evil and criminality, by sex, money, drugs, crime and greed.
The man the Police Minister made Police Commissioner – his cousin Ray Zammit
The Police Minister, Manuel Mallia
PC533 Paul Sheehan, the Police Minister’s driver who shot at Stephen Smith and threatened to unload his gun into him (recorded in a live phone call)
Stephen Smith – though he speaks fluent Maltese and English with a Maltese accent, the Police Commissioner and the minister’s driver discussed him as ‘L-Iskocciz’.
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Your last paragraph sums it up perfectly and terrifyingly .
In a normal country, criminal defence lawyers are loathed by policemen and prosecutors.
Has anybody asked why Manuel Mallia has so many friends in the police force?
Is this in any way related to the other oddity of half a million euros stashed away at home?
Does any of the above go some way towards explaining a feeble mind’s extraordinary success in court?
Why should there be no way out, Daphne? We have to believe that good will prevail in the end.
[Daphne – Oh yes, like good prevailed at the end of the five-year war against Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, with many millions dead and the whole of Europe destroyed, with half of Europe then having to live behind the Iron Curtain for the next 45 years, during which lengthy period hundreds of millions died who never lived to see freedom and justice. The expression ‘good will prevail’ is about the common good and not individuals. But we are individuals and not cogs in the great machine of time.]
Man, you live right next to a country that got rid of Gaddafi and right now is getting ISIS.
Pay a visit to the House of Terror in Budapest.
There you will see that good will prevail.
You will also see the cost, in human terms, of good prevailing.
If you do not come out of that superb museum of the history of fascism and communism shaking like a leaf then you are not a proper human being.
[Daphne – Yes, I came out of there shaking and traumatised. But what distressed me far more – it was 2006 and the city was marking the 50th anniversary of the Soviet invasion – were the photographs of ordinary people fighting against Soviet tanks with ordinary rifles and bits of furniture in 1956, and the descriptions of how they sent out messages believing with complete confidence that free Europe would come to their assistance, and the total despair when they realised they had been left alone to sink. I walked around the exhibits with tears running down my face. All those people who risked everything to fight in the conviction that help was on its way, of course help was on its way, were tortured and murdered, and those who were not among the hundreds of thousands who made it over the border and saved themselves were forced to live the next 33 years under the Soviet boot.]
FYI
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141206/local/morality-laws-need-reassessment-owen-bonnici.547056
“Siehbi” Sheehan must know way too much about Mallia, don’t you think?
If Muscat fears Mallia who in turn fears Sheehan, who’s running the “underworld” governing Malta?
” I just couldn’t put my finger on the source of all the signs I was picking up that the ‘movement’ was driven by a force of evil and criminality, by sex, money, drugs, crime and greed.”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141206/local/morality-laws-need-reassessment-owen-bonnici.547056
The sex trade : the best trade to get you out of precarity and poverty! What does Marie Louise Coleiro have to say about the most-feminist-government-in-Maltese-history’s latest idea?
When Minister Mallia was Minister of Justice, did he try to establish the identity of the notable lawyer who escaped from Malta years before, the moment Chief Justice Noel Arrigo was arrested?
Did he establish why the notable lawyer disappeared in a great hurry from Malta without trace and only returned to Malta when the waters calmed down?
Did he establish whether the relative investigation file was “disappeared”?
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.
After all the evidence produced, Manuel Mallia, Acting Commisioner Ray Zammit and Kurt Farrugia must go. They all had a finger in the pie.
And what does Joseph Muscat know about all this? Was he consulted by Kurt Farrugia before issuing the damning Press Release? I am morally convinced Joseph Muscat was made aware by Kurt Farrugia.
He must, in the circumstances, tender his resignation to the Head of State.
It’s already noon the day after and the usually prompt government press reaction is deafening by its absence. Have they run out of spin?
If Manuel Mallia, Kurt Farrugia and the Commissioner of Police have a level of decency (highly doubt it) they should resign pronto.
Anything said and done so far is a cover up of a cover up and if the P.M. intends on playing along in this game, he will further erode the little trust that the people still have in politicians and authority in general.
Austin Gatt and Tonio Fenech where viciously targeted for so much less. It all now seems insignificant compared to this. What should we do to Don Manuel?
Disgusting lot.
This would have been considered as a major incident with obvious political consequences. The lying press release is just a part of it.
When did they speak to the prime minister about this? Kurt Farrugia must have been speaking to him all along. He is, after all, directly answerable to him.
Are there transcripts for those calls? Are there transcripts for calls made to Silvio Scerri or are we to believe that the police chief of staff and the prime minster were not informed?
It had to be Kurt !
Koort
The buck stops with Joseph Muscat. He has no other option but to sack the lot of them or else he is an accomplice.
Joseph Muscat is an incompetent, irresponsible boy in a middle-aged man’s body. He should resign because he is not up to the task of leading a government.
Yes, the definite article in ‘L-Iskocciz’ betrays the fact that they knew exactly who they were talking about.
Had he not been someone they know well they would have said ‘wiehed Ingliz’ by virtue of either his fair complexion (as is customary in Malta to refer to fair people as ‘qisu/qisha Ingliz/a’) or the foreign number plates on the car he was driving.
‘L-Iskocciz’ is a nickname and not a description by strangers. He is known to the parties concerned by that nickname. Whether he is Scottish or English or Moroccan is not the issue here.
The press then picked it up and, not realising it is the nickname they use for him, described him as a Scotsman.
Truth is stranger than fiction because for it to be strange it has to verge on the incredible whilst being credible at the same time. And it is rendered credible because it is based on verifiable facts such as statements (even better, recordings), transcripts, photographs, CCTV and forensics.
The unknown factors are the intricci which can be surmised upon and gossiped about. This makes it all that more interesting than fiction where everything is revealed in the end.
As an avid crime reader and fan of True Crime TV, my gut feeling is that Smith has quite a special story to tell, and he holds a strong hand.
In the meantime I hear you can get quite a few hundred acres of virgin territory – great retirement country – near some of the Black Sea resorts, for 500k. Permits no problem if you’re well connected.
Pure speculation. Police officers habitually refer to known characters by their nicknames. That doesn’t mean they’re in collusion with them. E.g., Il-Pupa ghadu ma qamx?
[Daphne – That’s not my point, Kevin. How did they know he was L-Iskocciz, when the story they spun was that of a random hit-and-run with a total stranger? There is nothing about Smith which is even remotely Scottish. It is not as though he emerged from his car with bright red hair, freckles, a kilt and painted in woad while eating haggis, drinking whisky and speaking like Ewan McGregor. He looks and speaks exactly like a Maltese.]
Yes, it seems he was known to the police, and the commissioner was likely referring to him by nickname after being informed by Sheehan himself. That doesn’t say much.
[Daphne – Unbelievable, Kevin. And this from a former police officer.]
If Smith is known to the police there is no mystery in Sheehan referring to him by his nickname when reporting to the commissioner. You can speculate, certainly, but that’s what it will be: speculation.
[Daphne – Don’t be obtuse, Kevin. Smith is not ‘known to the police’. He is known to at least two police officers – the minister’s driver and the Police Commissioner – and to the minister himself, and not in the context of their police work either.
Smith was not a client of Manuel Mallia’s crime practice, but of his commercial practice. Mallia represented the company in a commercial dispute with a transport association.
You also choose to ignore the fact that the Police Commissioner and Manuel Mallia are cousins, which means that they have a non-professional relationship. And you overlook the fact that the Police Commissioner did not give a merit certificate to a policeman who helped rescue a drowning man, but last September gave the minister’s driver and his girlfriend’s father, Frans Micallef, a merit certificate for catching a hunter who shot a stork (which is presumably what they are paid to do anyway) and this when he knew full well that the stork in question had fallen into the garden of a farmhouse Micallef somehow bought off a policeman’s salary.
And the Police Commissioner had absolutely no shame in presenting it to the press as though Sheehan and Micallef had chased the hunter while out for a walk in the fields. Were the press told at the time that the ‘heroic’ constable was actually the police minister’s driver? No, we were not: deception of the first order.
Were we told that he is in a relationship with the other policeman’s daughter, which is why they were together in that garden at the time? No, we were not. Why? Because it doesn’t look good, that’s why.]
Manuel Mallia is a great example of the seven deadly sins rolled into one person. He’s the absolute pits of politicians and should not be allowed to hold any public office, When is he going to start enjoying his millions and leave us all in peace? Perhaps he can join John Dalli in Lourdes and pray for a total conversion.
How does he differ from Joseph Muscat in that respect?
Scary. There seem to be collusions upon collusions. Only God can take us out of this mess. Are the institutions working? Everything is far too complicated.