Goodness, they MIGHT consider prosecuting
Police sources have told The Malta Independent on Sunday that they are “not ruling out” pressing charges against Yana Mintoff Bland and/or her son Daniel Mainwaring.
Not ruling out? When somebody is stabbed in the stomach and is kept in the hospital’s intensive care unit (he’s still in there) for several days, when he didn’t stab himself and only another two people were in the room with him, it was one of those two people who stabbed him and the police are bound in terms of the law to prosecute. They cannot use their discretion when there is an attempt on a person’s life and/or serious wounds deliberately caused, nor do they act on the complaint of the injured party.
In the case of Yana Mintoff’s and Mainwaring’s wounds, the police are not obliged to prosecute because the wounds were slight – so slight they required negligible treatment – and will only do so on the complaint of the injured party, because the brawl took place between the four walls of the home. But this is not an option where Gheorghe Popa’s wounds are concerned. If a woman ends up in intensive care because her boyfriend has stabbed her in the stomach, the police do not wait for her to file a formal complaint before prosecuting. They prosecute.
The same applies here. I fear that Mintoff Bland and Mainwaring, in collusion with the Commissioner of Police who thinks that the Prime Minister “has balls”, may be working on some kind of false trade off: Mintoff Bland and Mainwaring ‘agreeing not to press charges’ against Popa in return for him ‘not pressing charges’ against them. But they can do that, and he can’t, because his wounds were serious and he would have died of them had they been left untreated.
The Malta Independent on Sunday also reports that Popa is under 24-hour police surveillance at the intensive care unit, while Mintoff Bland and Mainwaring are running about free. Yet this is not untoward and is actually a positive sign that the police have classified him as a victim of attempted murder. The victims of murder attempts always have a police guard while they are in hospital. It is for their own protection against the perpetrator trying to finish off the job.
