The story of two Colombians

A Colombian national, Andres Leonardo Gamboa Duran, confessed to dismembering a body, placing it in a suitcase, and dumping it at sea after discovering the body of the deceased – who he identified as Colombian national Raoul Eduardo Rei – in his Msida apartment.

Duran told police that Rei was a drug mule whom he found dead in his home. Panicking, he destroyed Rei’s documents, purchased an axe and a suitcase, and dismembered the body to fit it in the suitcase.

The suitcase was found by two French children on a paddleboat and towed to shore, before it was lifted up onto the Gzira seafront with the help of two adults who were passing by. The adults opened the suitcase and found Rei’s chopped up remains and immediately called the police.

Police arrested Duran after a surveillance operation near his Msida apartment where the police found cocaine and items related to drug trafficking together with items used by Duran when he attempted to ‘dispose’ of Rei’s body.

Duran faces several charges including disposing of evidence and drug trafficking, but not murder, as police believe the victim was already dead when he was dismembered.

The story made ‘interesting’, albeit macabre, news in the days leading to Christmas.

It is obvious that both Colombians were involved in illegal drug trafficking with the dead Raoul Eduardo Rei acting as a mule carrying drugs through Malta’s customs.

Among the many third country nationals working in Malta there are a substantial number of Colombians. Colombians do not need a visa to come to Malta because Malta is in the EU Schengen area. This applies to Colombian visitors coming to Europe for short stays of up to 90 days and all one needs to do is present one’s passport upon entering the Schengen Area.

Eventually, if they find a job in Malta they are allowed to stay on so long as they are registered as working. It is obvious that some Colombians are abusing of this privilege.

In many EU countries there are penalties for overstaying the 90-day limit. Fines can range from country to country and vary from €500 to €10,000. Among the more severe penalties for overstaying the 90-day limit one finds deportation and imprisonment.

In every EU country, immigration authorities register every Colombian person that enters and leaves in their databases.

I wonder what sort of follow-up is made in Malta to ensure that the 90-day limit is not breached.

Murder weapon?

The parents of a 30-year-old woman killed by a speeding driver seven years ago have had the wound of losing their daughter opened up again after the driver had his high-end sports car returned to him.

In an interview with Mark Lawrence Zammit of the Times of Malta, Anthony and Cynthia Rapa opened up for the first time about the horrific death of their daughter Stephanie, saying they feel “insulted” and devastated by the court decision handed down last month: “To us, the car is like the weapon of her death. No weapon is ever returned to the aggressor.”

The appeals court ruled that the car had not been properly listed in the court documents and, therefore, could not be legally confiscated.

While the court of appeal upheld the sentence and driving ban, the return of the car has reopened a deep wound for the grieving family.

In court it had been revealed the car was one of the nine fastest in the world and could go from zero to 60 miles per hour in just 2.8 seconds. It was being driven at excessive speed and had left tyre marks on the road measuring over 44 metres.

While I sympathise with the predicament of these parents, I think that calling a car a ‘murder weapon’ is over the top. I understand why these parents look at the car in this way, but the driver was not charged of murder. He was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for four years, and ordered to pay €324,000 in compensation to the woman’s heirs.

He could not be accused of ‘murder’, of course, because the incident – horrible as it is –can never be described as a murder. Nor is the car a murder weapon.

What surprises me was the way the author of the report in The Times practically endorsed this erroneous view when reporting the story.

The march of time

Each year, researchers discover an estimated 18,000 new species across the globe. These new species include small mammals, birds, insects, fish, reptiles, flowers, and fungi. And this year, the new species identified in 2024 did not disappoint.

In fact, scientists are saying that 2024, the year of the weirdest new animal species, saw the discovery of hundreds of new species, including a vegetarian piranha, the frogs of the Star Trek Universe, a glowing nudibranch, a grumpy coral-dweller and an Antarctic dragon fish. There were even a few that defied classification, such as the newest sea anemone

A Conservation International expedition into the Alto Mayo Landscape – the Peruvian rainforest – has uncovered 27 species that are new to science including four new mammals, eight fish, three amphibian and 10 butterfly species.

The four mammals are a bat, a squirrel, a spiny mouse and an exceedingly rare amphibious mouse with webbed feet.

The eight new fish species include a bizarre ‘blob-headed’ fish with the function of its unusual head remaining a mystery. The three new amphibians that are new to science are a rainfrog, a narrow-mouthed frog and a climbing salamander.

The new species discovered all over the world in 2024 include 32 fishes, 17 leaf bugs, 15 planthoppers, 14 worms, 12 skinks, 11 fossil gastropods, nine plants, eight sea slugs, seven spiders, seven beetles, two ghost sharks, one cusk eel, one gecko, one potato bug, and one pygmy pipehorse.

Scientists each year list the species that become extinct as well.

Although scientists go out of their way to halt such extinctions, the march of time cannot be stopped. This is how nature works. All species are in a state of constant flux.

So, what does the future hold for Homo Sapiens?

According to the late Stephen Hawking, it is “almost inevitable that either a nuclear confrontation or environmental catastrophe will cripple the Earth at some point in the next 1,000 years”. He insists that human existence would be able to survive only if the human race were able to colonise additional planets before the disaster.

Meanwhile, we go on with our daily lives...