These photos make me sick to the stomach.

It brings back to mind the dread of seeing Mintoff, and his three steps at the various intervals, on the riding track at Marsa. The anticipation of knowing the tiny horror would be there was bad enough, after yet another week of threats and trouble.

Can you fathom that, in retrospect? Three stone steps put up around a track in case this shit-head needed to mount his horse?

KMB to me is synonymous with the sound of beating on metal, with him standing on the front truck when the lot of them were on their destructive path to Valletta. The beat was slow and regular: Boom count 2 seconds Boom count 2 seconds Boom. You could hear them coming from a very good distance away: they must have been leaving Marsa when the first sounds arrived near the entrance to Valletta.

That’s the completely infamous WISTIN ABELA TAZ-ZEJTUN, a cabinet minister no less.

He was responsible for Air Malta, and most of the older employees at the national airline – reaching retirement age now – were ‘Wistin’s’ constituents and got their jobs as favours.

Wistin Abela was particularly notorious because he ran a gang of Zejtun thugs – the ones who ransacked the Courts of Justice, broke whatever they could and tore and set fire to court records.

He was an utterly poisonous man who, in New York City, would have been a Mafioso.

He turned up to the official opening of the Holiday Inn – this would have been close to 30 years ago –
in his capacity as a minister of the government, and declared the hotel open while standing with an retinue of his thugs – in front of the guests who included ambassadors and so on – wearing red T-shirts with the legend TA’ WISTIN (I was there).

And what’s with the rosery beads?