Over 1,700 magisterial inquiries remain pending, longest is Karin Grech murder

Information tabled in parliament on Tuesday has revealed there are more than 1,700 pending magisterial inquires, the investigations carried out on crimes by magistrates and police.

The figures indicate that there were 186 cases initiated in 2023 that are still pending, along with the 574 cases from 2022, 275 cases from 2021, and 172 cases from 2020 that are also still unresolved.

Between 2010 and 2019, there were a total of 446 pending cases. Additionally, there are six cases pending since 2009, one since 2006, and four since 2005.

Furthermore, there is one pending inquiry from each of the years 1992, 1991, 1990, 1989, 1988, and 1979.

Sources who spoke to this newspaper say the inquiry dating back to 1979 relates to the unresolved political murder of 15-year-old Karin Grech.

Speaking to the Times of Malta in 2022, Karin’s brother Kevin Grech said the family had not been contacted by the inquiring magistrate for at least five years. He said he did not even know if a new one had been appointed or who he or she was, adding it was “shameful” that he had never been contacted. “There was and there should be a magisterial inquiry but where is it?” he said.

Karin Grech was murdered in December 1977 when she opened a parcel, that contained a letter-bomb sent to the family house. The 15-year-old opened the package in the presence of her 10-year-old brother, thinking that the package was a gift.

The brown envelope which contained the explosive device that killed Karin Grech

The target had been her father, a medical professional and strike-breaker at the time of the 1977 doctors’ strike.

The bomb exploded, and Karin died half an hour later at St Luke’s hospital due to severe burns on various parts of her body.

At her funeral Mass, Archbishop Mikiel Gonzi described the murder as “the first terrorist act in the country”.

On the same day the Grech family received the bomb, another bomb was also sent to doctor and Labour MP Paul Chetcuti Caruana, but it did not detonate.

At the time of the murder, doctors at St Luke’s hospital were taking industrial action following disagreement between the government and the Medical Association of Malta. Doctors were locked out of the hospital during their strike, but Edwin Grech worked during the industrial dispute.

Grech, then working as an obstetrics and gynaecology consultant in the UK, had agreed to return to Malta to head the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department.

Despite there being no forensic evidence linking the bomb to the doctors’ strike, the dispute is widely blamed for the horrific murder, as well as political elements within the medical profession that could be connected to the crime.

In 2016, a civil court awarded €419,000 in compensation to the Grech family for the politically motivated crime.

Edwin Grech died in March 2023 at 94, never to see justice done for the murder of his daughter. His nephew is PN leader Bernard Grech, who called his uncle a source of inspiration and “a hero”.