Mosta doctor Paul Chetcuti Caruana, targeted by 1977 letter bomb, dies aged 77

Updated 5pm

Paul Chetcuti Caruana, a Mosta doctor who in 1977 received a letter bomb that failed to explode, died early on Wednesday at the age of 77.

He received the letter bomb on the same day that another letter bomb killed Karin Grech, daughter of medical professor Edwin Grech, during the doctors' strike in December 1977. 

Chetcuti Caruana was a Labour MP between 1976 and 1981 and mayor of his hometown Mosta between 2007 and 2012. 

Prime Minister Robert Abela paid tribute to Chetcuti Caruana in a Facebook post, saying he was a man of service in public life, as a doctor, an MP and mayor. 

Parliament on Wednesday expressed its condolences, and will officially do so again in another sitting.

The Mosta Local Council and the Labour Party also paid tribute and offered their condolences to the family. They also made reference to the trauma he went through in 1977.

Two doctors targeted

In 1977 doctors in Malta were taking industrial action following a dispute between the government and the Medical Association of Malta. A main bone of contention was a two-year housemanship imposed on new doctors before getting their warrant.

Medical strikes followed and the Labour government retaliated by locking strikers out of hospital. The medical course was also affected and students were forced to study abroad.

Professor Edwin Grech was working as an obstetrics and gynaecology consultant in the UK. The government asked him to return to Malta to head the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department at St Luke’s Hospital. He agreed to do so for the duration of the industrial dispute in the best interest of patients. As a result he was labelled a strike-breaker.

Meanwhite Chetcuti Caruana was leading other doctors in St Luke’s at the time and was under the spotlight because of his close friendship with Mintoff, as well as being a Labour MP.

The undetonated letter bomb

On December 28, 1977, two letter bombs were sent to the homes of the two doctors. One was sent to the home of Grech. His 15-year-old daughter Karin opened the package addressed to her father. She thought the package was a Christmas present but it turned out to be a letterbomb that killed her.

Karin Grech's murder has remained unsolved.

That same day a letter bomb was sent to Chetcuti Caruana. That parcel failed to detonate. In an interview with The Malta Independent in 2008 Chetcuti Caruana said that some doctors suspected him due to the fact that his letter bomb did not detonate. 

In the interview, he spoke about how he had been receiving threatening calls so, when the parcel arrived, at about 11.45am, he suspected something was off and opened it very slowly.

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

“It was a semtex bomb made to go off as soon as the lid was lifted," he said. "Semtex is a plastic explosive that does not require much electronic expertise to put together. I remember that it was a sunny day and that the parcel had a palm print on it. The same palm print was later confirmed to be the same as the one on the Grech’s parcel. I suspect that whoever was carrying it must have held on to it very tightly for fear the lid would come off,” he said.

“When Scotland Yard and the Italian Guardie came to inspect the bomb, they both said that the terminals were rusty, which prevented contact with the plastic. I remember that when I called the Police Depot to tell them about the bomb, the person at the other end of the line told me that Edwin Grech’s daughter had died…" he said in the interview.

At Grech's funeral, Archbishop Mikiel Gonzi described the murder as "the first terrorist act" in Malta's history. The case has never been solved. Grech’s father died in March 2023, aged 94. He spent his life seeking answers and putting pressure on investigators to solve the case.