Sion Grech’s father sought news of her every day from the time she was last seen alive until the day her corpse was discovered at a Marsa field, a former post-mortem assistant testified on Monday. 

When Grech’s murder trial resumed on Monday, Carmel Camilleri explained that he had known the victim’s father and also used to see Grech in Ħamrun.

After filing a missing person’s report, her concerned father would turn up at the station every day, asking whether he had any information about her, the elderly witness recalled. 

Yet, after the discovery of the corpse on April 13, a week since Sion Grech had been reported missing, Camilleri did not recognise the badly decomposed body whom he was tasked by the post-mortem specialist to transport to the mortuary. 

The hair and scalp fell apart when the corpse was being lifted, the witness recalled. 

Sion Grech’s parents had both told investigators that they last saw Sion at around 8.30am on April 5 in 2005. 

The father explained that his son sometimes wore women’s clothes and often went about with his friend, Ismael Habesh. 

Grech used the pronouns she/her. Given that she was murdered years before the Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act of 2015, she is listed in legal documents as a male named Simon. Previous court reports stated that she was also known as Simone. 

On Monday, the court heard that Sion usually slept at her parents' home and whenever she was away, she would always get in touch.

So when two days lapsed and no one heard anything from Sion, not even at the detox centre where she regularly went, the worried couple turned to the police.

Yet what started off as a missing person’s report handled by the Vice Squad, days later evolved into a murder investigation, said Superintendent Louise Calleja when testifying on Monday. 

Prior to the discovery of Sion’s stabbed body on April 13, investigators questioned several people who frequented the area in Marsa where the missing person was last spotted. 

Marks on Habesh's hands

One of those was Grace Cini who recalled that on the evening of April 5, Sion had told her about an argument she had just had with a client.

She wished to borrow Cini’s phone to call Habesh but since the phone owner had run out of credit, Sion headed to the White Stars Bar to make the call. 

That was when Cini last saw Sion, wearing white high-heeled shoes. 

Cini later spotted Habesh in a red Ford Escort near the Marsa abattoir. 

He spoke to her briefly and drove off.

Habesh was also questioned. 

Police noticed “marks on his hands,” said Calleja, adding that he was examined at the Floriana polyclinic. 

On the eve of the discovery of Sion’s corpse, Calleja and two colleagues had continued their searches in that Marsa area. 

While she walked along that stretch of road, her two colleagues entered the field where the body was discovered the next day. 

But since it was dark, they decided to call off the search, not venturing far into the field of tall grass. 

There was no CCTV footage from the crime scene to help investigators, said Calleja, explaining that at the time the nearby HSBC bank premises were closed. 

Investigations continued, occasionally coming to a standstill. 

But things allegedly began to fall into place following information that led investigators to an eyewitness. 

'Sion was pushed, beaten, kicked, dragged by her hair and stabbed'

That witness, Jacqueline Rapinett, gave police a first-hand account of that fateful night in Marsa when she was with Sion shortly before Habesh and another man, whose name she was not familiar with, turned up in the red Escort. 

Habesh stepped out of the vehicle, approached Sion and a fight broke out. 

He beat Sion, pushed her to the ground and dragged her by the hair, kicking her sides as she lay on the street. 

Then the passenger in the Escort joined Habesh. 

They both dragged Sion to the pavement and pulled her into the field. 

The eyewitness could no longer see Sion in the tall grass but saw both Habesh and the other man stab the screaming victim with knives. 

“She was very agitated,” testified the superintendent who had been present at that eyewitness statement and recalled that Rapinett was “terrified”.

At that stage, the second suspect was unknown.

But when further information around 2010 led investigators to Faical Mahouachi, who at the time was not present in Malta, the eyewitness immediately identified him.

“That’s the one. He was with Habesh,” the woman had told police when they conducted an identification parade using numbered photos. 

When the suspect was eventually tracked down and arrested in 2013, she “immediately” confirmed her choice when asked to attend another parade with a line of individuals. 

Faical was pointed out as Number 9 in that lineup and again as number 3 when the order was re-shuffled for further confirmation. 

During Monday’s morning sitting at the trial, former police inspector Chris Pullicino was called back to the witness stand. 

He confirmed that he had joined the murder investigations in 2008 and had received the anonymous letter that led police to Rapinett. 

The eyewitness had been told by her partner about a robbery committed by Sion before she went missing.  In 2005, Gejtu Scerri, Rapinett’s partner and pimp, had also pleaded guilty to mugging, living off the earnings of prostitution as well as recidivism. 

Asked by the jurors whether Sion had a pimp, Pullicino said Habesh had always featured “not as pimp but as partner”. 

“They took drugs together… one worked to buy drugs which they then shared,” went on the witness, adding that the relationship of Rapinett with Scerri and Grech’s with Habesh were “quite different”. 

The jurors sought answers over the information allegedly linking Mahouachi to the murder. 

Police originally suspect another Arab man, Jamal Salem Abulked as the one who was involved with Habesh in the killing.

Jamal had been with Habesh earlier that April 2005 evening when they checked on Sion in Marsa, but had headed home around 8.30pm.

Rapinett did not identify Jamal. 

Confidential information subsequently emerged, indicating that investigators were after the wrong man. 

When Mahouachi was finally arrested, Rapinett immediately identified him as having been with Habesh. 

The trial is still ongoing. 

AG lawyers Anthony Vella and Abigail Caruana Vella are prosecuting.

Lawyers Edward Gatt and Ishmael Psaila are counsel to Habesh.

Lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace is counsel to Mahouachi. Lawyer Roberto Montalto is appearing parte civile.