Karin Grech investigators still seeking fingerprints of 119 suspects in ‘med school’ plot

A total of 119 medical graduates and doctors who left Malta after the 1977 murder of Karin Grech have yet to be called in by police and New Scotland Yard over a request to have their fingerprints examined in connection with the letter-bomb that killed Grech.

Only seven medical professionals who migrated to the United Kingdom after the doctors' strike and the closure of the medical school, have had their prints taken by the Metropolitan police, and ruled out of the ongoing investigation.

The 126 medical graduates include fourth-year and fifth-year medical students, and also doctors, who in 1977 left Malta to complete their medical course in the United Kingdom.

Prof. Edwin Grech yesterday reiterated claims on Net TV's Evidenza that a group of medical graduates and members of doctors' union MAM hatched the plot to kill him by letter-bomb for taking up sojourn as the head of obstetrics during the strike.

Karin Grech was killed by the letter-bomb, delivered by post in a brown envelope that contained a parcel wrapped like a Christmas present, on 28 December 1977. The bomb was addressed to Edwin Grech, who was deemed to be a strike-breaker during the doctors' strike that eventually lasted 10 years. The Grech family had only arrived back to Malta from the UK six months previously, to assist in the national health service, when medical students were going abroad to complete their courses after a dispute was triggered when government amended legislation governing medical licensing. Medical graduates protested the two-year housemanship imposed on new doctors before getting their warrant. A partial medical strikes was ordered by the Medical Association of Malta, and the Labour government ordered a hospital lock-out of strikers.

Grech said the plotters met in the legal office of a politician after the Medical School was closed down, and commissioned a criminal expert to manufacture the bomb. Grech also claims a source - a carpenter by trade - informed him that it was another carpenter who delivered the parcel to the post office, evidenced by his missing fingers and the palmprint resulting on the envelope in which the bomb had been inserted.

Another letter-bomb had been delivered to former MP Paul Chetcuti-Caruana, which however did not explode.

"It's clear the police is not working on the case. I'm incommunicado with them... all the political cases have not been solved because they are simply political. I lost hope that we will ever solve the murder," Grech said.

Grech also said Malta needs a reconciliation commission for a public admission and contrition over the political incidents in recent history. "I never did anything wrong to anyone. I simply took my Hippocratic oath to help people. Nobody should insult us by telling us we have to move forward. We cannot leave these wounds open, and forget the past," an emotional Grech said on Net TV yesterday.

The police yesterday replied to Grech's complaint of having been left helpless by police investigators, that all information which came to the knowledge of police, including the information referred to by Grech himself, had been thoroughly investigated.

"It is to be added that this case has been rigorously investigated along the years and it is still being intensively investigated up to this day. However, as case is still subject to a pending Magisterial Inquiry, it is felt imprudent to give details of investigations made," Commissioner of Police John Rizzo said.

Grech claims a 'hidden hand' has prevented police from properly investigating the case.

In 1990, as interior minister Guido Demarco reordered a fingerprint analysis on the bomb's parcel after two earlier fingerprints analyses had been compromised by the fact that a police officer, involved in the Karin Grech bomb's forensic examination, had admitted he was ordered to frame PN activist Martin Gaffarena.

Grech also complained that police  had wasted time to track down a suspect with a long criminal record who left the island shortly after, and was later seen in the UK and Australia.

"It was me who tracked him down in Australia, and paved the way for the police to go there in person and take his fingerpints," Grech said.

Then police commissioner George Grech, assistant commissioner Joe Cachia, and fingerprints analyst Joe Mallia went to Australia to meet the suspect. The palmprint analysis was negative, and confirmed by the Australian federal police.