That is true but still at least things are not and never have been in the past so bad here in comparison with Middle Eastern and African states.

You have all the tribal and religious factions all fighting each other and to make things worse they do it with weapons they got from the West.

The perfect breeding ground for criminal gangs like ISIS.

But I wouldn’t stand for the alternative. Would you?

It’s about time this kind of evil is prosecuted.

The victims were migrants from Africa, probably from former French-speaking colonies.

This coincided with an upsurge of visa applications at our embassy in Tripoli, where I was serving, from citizens of those former colonies.

Malta’s immigration authorities accepted my advice not to issue tourist visas to them.

To keep such tragedies in their proper perspective, the real criminals are the human traffickers, and those who force these migrants to leave their home countries because of the conditions prevailing there.

You shouldn’t wish that. It’s very Old Testament. But I empathise completely.

May worse be done to them than they did to the victims.

You can’t leave the doors open when you’re smuggling people.

I don’t agree generally with the death penalty, but a person who does this kind of thing does not deserve to live in a society. Bare minimum, a lifelong sentence with absolutely no possibility for parole.