The nurses' union has demanded round-the-clock prison security around Abner Aquilina to protect nurses while he is treated at Mount Carmel Hospital. 

Aquilina is awaiting trial for the rape and murder of Paulina Dembska in Sliema on January 2, 2022.

The union has written to the hospital management after Magistrate Marse-Ann Farrugia upheld a request by the defence in pre-trial proceedings for Aquilina to be sent back to a regular ward at Mount Carmel Hospital as originally decreed by the court last year.

The lawyers had complained that despite the previous court decision for Aquilina to be treated in a regular ward, he had been moved to the hospital's forensic unit which is managed by the prison authorities and which, they claimed, did not offer the same level of care.

Aquilina is pleading not guilty to murdering the 29-year-old student, and his lawyers are seeking to have him declared insane.

In a letter to hospital CEO Stephanie Xuereb, Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses president Paul Pace said the union was “shocked” by the court’s decision to transfer Aquilina to a regular ward at Mount Carmel. The union gave the hospital management 48 hours to inform it what measures will be taken “to mitigate the dangers of nursing Abner Aquilina”.

“MUMN is insisting that prison guards should be stationed at Mount Carmel Hospital with the patient on a 24/7 basis,” Pace wrote.

“MUMN reserves the right of immediate industrial action without any prior notice if the nurses feel that their lives are threatened by such a patient,” he added.

The court heard on Wednesday how police officers searching Aquilina’s cell at Mount Carmel’s Forensic Unit faced a barrage of vulgar language by the inmate who bragged about how he had murdered Dembska. He cursed the officers proclaimed himself “the antichrist”.

The search was triggered after fellow inmates spoke about how Aquilina “bragged” on and on about how he had strangled and raped the Polish student.