Close-protection security for Theuma removed as early as December 2019

A close-protection officer who provided security inside the house of Melvin Theuma was removed early on in the days that the middleman in the Caruana Galizia assassination turned State’s evidence.

Despite his role as a high-value witness in the assassination plot, the Maltese police accepted to remove the third officer providing close-protection security to Theuma on request of his lawyers, on 5 December 2019 – just two weeks after the arrest of Yorgen Fenech, the alleged mastermind in the assassination.

The police started providing protection services for Theuma since 17 November 2019, with four officers assigned from the Special Intervention Unit and district personnel round the clock.

“For the first couple of weeks, police officers were conducting surveillance from inside and outside his residence. Upon a request by Mr Theuma and his lawyers, the presence of officers inside his home was suspended. However, officers were assigned to carry out this task from outside his home, in the common areas and everywhere that Mr Theuma used to go. It must be noted that Mr Theuma is a state witness and is not under arrest therefore his and his lawyer’s request to have some privacy in his own home where he lives with his family, was accepted,” the police told MaltaToday.

 But with Theuma’s recent testimony in court about his life “finishing” with Daphne Caruana Galizia’s death possibly indicating some form of psychological stress, Commissioner Gafà claimed with the press that police had no indications that Theuma had suicidal tendencies. Yet no statements have been made as to whether Theuma had a psychiatric assessment during the time he was testifying in court against a criminal conspiracy.

Theuma’s home in Swieqi was guarded by two other police officers stationed outside his front door on Triq is-Sirk, and inside the basement garage on the back of his apartment building.

The police has insisted that Theuma, now under stable condition after an attempted suicide, had told inspector Keith Arnaud and parademics he had stabbed himself in the neck and thorax.

The incident happened on the eve of an important court sitting in the compilation of evidence against Yorgen Fenech, the alleged mastermind in the Caruana Galizia assassination.

Theuma was found at his Swieqi home on Triq is-Sirk with a knife in his right hand and multiple injuries below the kidneys, neck and a wrist. Gafà said some of the injuries were deep. Gafà said there were no so-called ‘defensive wounds’ and the blood splatter was also indicative of self-injury. “There were no reports of struggle and no one heard any commotion,” Gafà said.

Questions as to whether Theuma felt compelled or pressured to kill himself are being asked after Fenech’s defence were preparing tp question him in court about recordings that suggest that former Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar could have taken a bribe of €30,000 to push for a pardon for Theuma.

“Who was to gain most from Melvyn Theuma’s suicide? Did he decide to commit suicide, or could there also be the possibility that he was pressured to do it?” civil society NGO Repubblika asked.

Repubblika said the case raised the question of what security was being provided for the judges, lawyers, police, witnesses on the case.

“Shouldn’t they be entitled to the sort of escort provided to key people in anti-mafia trials, given the national importance of what is being revealed?

“Despite Police Commissioner Gafà’s explanation that Europol itself does not want to proceed to a Joint Investigative team, we maintain that the corruption allegations emerging from the testimonies go well beyond national interest, and so our plea for a joint investigative team remains. Moreover, could there not be collaboration with a single country, such as asking for help from Italian expert anti-mafia investigators, given the mafia-like deals that are slowly emerging?”