Man facing trial for murder of pupil, 15, accepted as student at University of Malta
Erin Tanti, currently facing trial for the murder of one of his 15-year-old pupils, after having groomed her for a sexual relationship, this month began reading psychology and anthropology at the University of Malta.
Meinrad Calleja was allowed out of prison almost every day to go to university, while he was serving a 15-year sentence for trafficking (not dealing, but trafficking) in cocaine.
Erin Tanti, who is facing trial for the murder of one of his 15-year-old pupils, who he groomed for a sexual relationship, has been accepted as a freshman at the University of Malta, where he began reading psychology and anthropology this month. His course-mates, fresh out of sixth form college, are 18.
Lisa Marie Zahra, 15, was found dead at the foot of Dingli Cliffs last year, after being taken there at night by Erin Tanti, her drama teacher at St Michael School. He had plied her with pills and alcohol.
Despite having been accepted as a teacher at the school, Tanti did not even have an honours degree, let alone a teaching qualification. Though he claimed otherwise, he had failed to graduate in honours from the theatre studies course at the University of Malta because – I am now informed – his dissertation, which was on the subject of Dom Mintoff’s theatricality in politics, was seriously substandard. He was permitted to graduate with a general degree.
The University of Malta really must review its policy of accepting as students those who have been convicted of serious crimes, who are facing trial for serious crimes, and who are even serving prison sentences for serious crimes while they are students. The university’s ‘open doors’ policy has to be set against its duty of care towards its younger students.
Ten years ago, the notorious cocaine trafficker Meinrad Calleja, who was under surveillance in London and imprisoned in Rome before being sentenced to 15 years in prison in Malta on cocaine-trafficking charges, was accepted as a student at the University of Malta while he was serving his prison sentence.
A prison van drove him to the university almost every day, but he was then allowed to attend lectures unaccompanied, wander round campus and the library, and hang about waiting – still unaccompanied – at the university gate for the prison van to collect him.
I saw him lounging alone against the wall at the Mireva bookshop one afternoon when I dropped off one of my sons at the gate, and I was aghast. I was so reluctant to believe the unbelievable sight before me that I actually parked my car and went up to him to ask what time he thought the bookshop opened, just to be sure it was him (and also to make sure he knew I’d seen him). And my God, it was.
On my return home, I immediately rang the Ministry responsible for prisons and demanded to know why in God’s name a man who was supposed to be locked up in prison serving 15 years for cocaine trafficking was instead hanging around at the university with a bunch of 18-year-olds, and what’s more, completely alone and unsupervised. Were they perhaps interested in helping him build a new market base, ready for when he got out of prison again – or to give him a market while he was in prison? And that was quite apart from all the other quite serious risks of having a man like that out and about and able to get in touch with anyone and talk to anyone and fix things because nobody was supervising him.
The response I got was that the Prison Board had approved his request to study at the university. My response to that was, quite frankly, completely unprintable.
Where in the world does this kind of thing happen? When cocaine traffickers and murderers want to study while they are serving time, the teachers should be taken to them inside the prison, rather than them being let out of jail to mix with potential prey in the university itself.
Because, of course, where would you put a cocaine trafficker and a man who preyed on a pupil and killed her, if not in a small area packed with thousands of teenagers?