Prime Minister Robert Abela on Monday issued a fresh appeal for information into the murders of Karin Grech and Raymond Caruana, after a Nationalist MP suggested holding separate public inquiries into the two cases.

Both tragedies had shocked Malta.

Karin Grech, 15, was killed by a letter bomb on December 28, 1977. The small parcel was addressed to her father, Edwin, a doctor working at St Luke's Hospital at the height of the doctors' strike.

Raymond Caruana was killed on December 5, 1986 at the PN club in Gudja, when unknown people sprayed machinegun fire at the club's door during a reception. The killing took place amid high political tension, days after clashes when the police and Labour thugs prevented the PN from holding a mass meeting in Zejtun. 

Karin Grech, who was just 15, died when she opened a letter bomb addressed to her father.

PN MP Graziella Attard Previ recalled the killings in a parliamentary question on Monday. 

She said holding public inquiries could help establish the facts and help the country reconcile after those traumatic events.  

Replying, the prime minister said those two events remained a blot on the country's history and he was appealing to anyone having any information to follow his conscience and come forward. Both investigations remain open.

The prime minister observed that successive previous administrations never took this step (of holding public inquiries) when the time was more opportune. They had taken other actions, however, such as the payment of compensation to the Caruana family.

He also referred Attard Previ to a court judgement regarding Karin Grech, which had also declared the motive behind that murder. It was regrettable, he said, that the sentence was appealed by the administration of the time.  

The Constitutional Appeals Court had subsequently upheld the judgement, which had ordered the government to pay €420,000 in compensation to the family of Karin Grech.

The government of the time had not contested the amount given as compensation but had contested that part of the court judgement that said that the bomb had been mailed to Prof Edwin Grech (Karin's father) in view of the services he had given during a politically sensitive period in the late 1970s.

The appeal court judges ruled that once the government had already made the compensation payment, it had inferred acceptance of both the amount and the reasoning given in the judgement of the court.