Chantelle Chetcuti was murdered six years ago. Her family still has no closure

Six years on from Chantelle Chetcuti’s murder, her sister has spoken publicly about the toll that years of waiting for justice have taken on their family.

Chetcuti, 34, was fatally stabbed outside a club in Żabbar on February 2, 2020, while she was out for a drink with a friend. Her former partner and the father of her two children, Justin Borg, is accused of her murder. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is currently out on bail.

Marking the anniversary of her sister’s death, Stacey Camilleri took to social media to reflect on what she described as years spent in limbo.

“Six years of waiting. Six years of living in limbo while the man who confessed to police remains out on bail,” Camilleri wrote.

She said that after more than half a decade, there has finally been some movement in the case, noting that “we are close to a jury date”. However, she stressed that this did not amount to progress in her eyes.

“To me, it looks like failure,” she said.

Camilleri wrote that one of the hardest realities to come to terms with was the possibility that even when the case concludes, the wider justice system, "may still be broken”.

She said she had repeatedly asked those in power what she described as a simple question: “Can justice without timelines be called justice?” She added that she had yet to receive an answer.

Plagued by delays

Malta's court system is plagued by delayed trials and lengthy criminal proceedings, with the country regularly ranking towards the bottom of the EU's Justice Scoreboard.

A report published by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation suggests the backlog is growing rather than shrinking:  "On average, six murders are committed per year but only 1.5 murder cases are concluded. This is creating a mounting backlog of unresolved cases: 46% of homicide cases committed and arraigned between 2010 and 2020 remain pending,” the Foundation said.

Plans to overhaul the criminal justice system have been discussed for years. The government had in 2023 said it wanted to cut down the lengthy compilation of evidence stage in criminal cases to just one year, as part of a comprehensive reform of the pre-trial phase.

That reform has yet to see the light of day. 

In her post, Camilleri emphasised the profound impact on families such delays have.

A system meant to deliver accountability had failed to deliver any sense of healing and had instead “deepened the wounds already there”.

Camilleri described the justice system as one that moves “too slowly to protect, too slowly to punish, and too slowly to deserve the word justice”. 

Camilleri said that without timelines enshrined in law, “justice delayed becomes another form of cruelty”. She added: “Families are asked to put their lives on hold, not because solutions do not exist, but because action is not taken.”

She said she hoped the country’s “leaders” would open up their eyes to see what is wrong with the system, insisting that no family should be forced to grieve while also fighting for justice within what she described as a broken framework. 

“What happened to my sister cannot be undone. But what followed should never be repeated,” she said.