Breaking news: Police hushed up a fourth suicide attempt on 5th January

Besides the three men – one Maltese, one German, one British, all of them held on drugs-related matters – who died while in police custody over the last few weeks, and who are reported to have died by hanging, a fourth man tried to kill himself on 5th January at the Police Headquarters lock-up in Floriana but survived.

Information about this attempted suicide has been kept hidden from the public in the ongoing scandal about the deaths of three men. The details were given to me this afternoon by somebody who deal with the incident directly in the course of his work shortly after he read this post.

The man, a Libyan, tried to kill himself on the eve of his arraignment in court by slitting his wrists, telling those who came to his aid that he wanted to die because he felt trapped and claustrophobic and because a police inspector had told him that he would be kept in prison for 12 years for his crimes.

The person who contacted me said: “Two actual suicides and one attempted suicide in the Police HQ lock-up in just a few weeks” – the third suicide was at the prison section of Mount Carmel Hospital – “is a matter of grave concern. Something is obviously going on. Maybe the prisoners are being verbally abused and driven to suicide at the lowest point of their lives. Or maybe they’re not being supervised properly when they are prone to depression in their situation and not being kept in suitably safe cells.”

Carmelo Abela, you are responsible