Victim still awaits justice 20 years after of burglary

Justice Minister Owen Bonnici ruled out introducing a legal notice which would not allow courts to suspend sentences when guilty parties file a case against the State at a European level.

Joe Zammit Tabona, a retired lawyer and victim of a burglary in 1995, won €130,000 in damages and despite having this sentence upheld by four separate courts, the judgement has been suspended by Judge Jacqueline Padovani Grima after the debtor – who happened to be the family’s handy man – opened a case against Malta in the European Court of Human Rights.

Asked whether government was following the case, Bonnici said the burglary case received ample media coverage, some of which was made relative to the cases instituted by Zammit Tabona before the ordinary civil courts.

“The same coverage also surrounded the constitutional redress proceedings which were instituted relative to the same burglary incident. This inevitably means that the cases were followed by the Ministry and a thorough analysis was also effected relative to the findings of the various domestic courts involved,” Bonnici said.

Yet, the newly appointed minister ruled out the introduction of a legal provision to avoid such idiosyncrasies, saying, “the advice which I have from the Office of the Attorney General is in the sense that the law already adequately provides for this eventuality in the Code of Organization and Civil Procedure”.

However, speaking to MaltaToday, Joe Zammit Tabona said that after years 19 years of pain, he is “ready to die for [his] principles”.
He argues that the decision to suspend the judgement confirmed in four separate courts in Malta is “scandalous”.

The 85-year-old Zammit Tabona explained that the Maltese law stipulates that: “A judgement shall not operate to the prejudice of any person who neither personally, nor through the person under whom he claims, nor through his lawful agent, was party to the cause determined by such judgement.”

This he added, means that “if the judgment debtor decides to take Malta to the European Court of Human rights, on alleged grounds of unfair hearing, the judgement creditor has nothing to do with the new case, whatever the outcome. So to suspend the execution of the judgement by the judgement creditor is clearly in breach of the law.”

Insisting that the case opened against the state by the man found guilty of being the brains behind the burglary in which Zammit Tabona and his wife Mae were beaten up by seven hooded men who stole around Lm500,000 worth of gold and jewellery in 1995, the retired lawyer says “the debtor’s case against the state has nothing to do with my case, which was established by Malta’s Supreme Court”.

Describing the decision to suspend the execution of the sentence as “an insult to the judiciary itself,” Zammit Tabona said that this view is shared by a number of legal experts, including former European Court of Human Rights judge Giovanni Bonello, former Chief Justice Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici and Dutch European law experts.

“These retired judges and legal experts are livid at the goings on at the Law Courts,” he said, adding that not only did the decision create a dangerous precedent which can only be addressed by a legal notice, “but it has cast a bad light over the Judiciary involved in the giant error”.

He added that the suspension of the case constitutes the “highest level of injustice in civil cases as the case refers to a file examined by eight judges over some 15 years dealing with a hold-up which caused great commotion in itself, causing great financial loss – a record for a private house – a destroyed family and the eventual death of my wife after a bedridden calvary, all at the hands of the judgement debtor, civilly responsible.”