Nicholas Azzopardi’s family start legal action against police and wife, claim cover-up

The relatives of Nicholas Azzopardi - who died from injuries incurred in a fall from the bastions of the police headquarters in Floriana while under police custody - have filed a judicial protest against the police and Azzopardi's estranged wife for damages, alleging their responsibility in a cover-up of the events leading to Azzopardi's mysterious death.

Azzopardi claimed on his deathbed of having been beaten to a pulp by his custodians before waking up in a hospital bed, having been recovered from the foot of the bastions beneath the CID offices at the Floriana depot back in April 2008.

He had been held under arrest and for questioning on a report by his wife Claudette Azzopardi, of having molested his daughter - he died on 22 April, two weeks after the 9 April incident which did not go reported by an official police release until MaltaToday broke the story, leading to three magisterial inquiries that so far have been inconclusive on the events that led to Azzopardi's death.

In their protest, filed by lawyer Alex Sciberras - a Labour candidate for the Msida local council elections - Azzopardi's father Joseph and brother Reno Azzopardi accused Claudette Azzopardi and her mother Antonia Patinott, of filing an untrue report to the police "in complicity, collusion or gross negligence of the social worker employed by Appogg and members of the police corps."

The protest also states that:

• That the accused - Claudette Azzopardi and Antonia Patinott; Former home affairs minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici; court expert Martin Bajada; police superintended Alexandra Mamo, inspectors Paul Caruana and Graziella Muscat, constables Adrian Lia and Reuben Zammit, social worker Melissa Xuereb, and Dr Charles Grixti of Mater Dei Hospital, of having been part of a "cover-up in which Nicholas Azzopardi's death was obfuscated, and essential evidence directly eliminated."
• Azzopardi's death was not accidental or self-inflicted, but a result of his police custodians' actions;
• That Azzopardi was not given the care he required at Mater Dei Hospital, leading to his untimely death;
• That investigations by the police and the inquiring magistrate, and the testimony of court expert Dr Martin Bajada, delivered several shortcomings in their conclusions

Azzopardi's relatives have claimed in a book they published of his death that three inquiries failed to mention the existence of a tunnel metres away from where Azzopardi was found, that linked the police depot to the ditch where he was recovered by hospital staff. 

In two site plans included in the inquiries, presented by two separate architects, the tunnel and its entrances do not appear anywhere. Yet court expert Bajada testified that architect Valerio Schembri "noted and included of every door and window and every gate and barrel bolt at the depot."

The Azzopardi's claim the tunnel could be accessed from the bottom of the bastion, just metres away from the spot Azzopardi was found unconscious, and also from the alley behind the depot, from where the police claimed that Azzopardi jumped.

The pictures published in the book show parts of the tunnel which are a dead end and other parts are closed with bars, which could explain a number of missing links or ambiguous evidence included in the inquiries.

Azzopardi's family has always insisted that the injuries sustained by Nicholas were not compatible with a fall, as claimed by the police. However their requests for an autopsy have repeatedly been turned down.