If you haven’t already done so, watch this Akira Kurosawa film from 1950. Here be spoilers. Two men are stuck in a hut sheltering from the rain and one asks the other why he’s so glum. The glum guy tells his story.
A friend, a woodcutter, told him he had witnessed a rape and a murder while working in the forest. A couple was walking nearby when a bandit stopped them. The bandit raped the woman and killed the man. The innocent bystander found himself testifying in the bandit’s trial. At the trial, there were three other witnesses: the widow who had been raped, the alleged rapist-murderer, and, because this is a story set in the 12th century, the ghost of the murdered man speaking through a medium.
As the four versions of the story play out, we see the events repeated on screen. The basic facts are always the same. Forest, bandit, woodcutter, sex, stab, death, trial. But, in each version, details are slightly different. Sometimes the sex is violent, sometimes consensual. Sometimes the bandit is acting alone, sometimes the woman is his accomplice. You get the drift.
The man in the rain patiently listened to four versions of the events and was now waiting for his sheltering companion to tell him which one was true. We, as viewers of the film, also wait to be told which sequence of events is the real one, unblemished by the biases and interests of the witnesses.
But this is the reason of the unhappiness of our depressed narrator. He just doesn’t know which version, if any, is true. He can’t replay the events with objectivity. He can only rely on the contradictory evidence given by the four witnesses and choose whom to believe.
Did I say ‘whom’? Wrong. Any witness might be telling the truth in one bit of their evidence and lying in another. You must choose what to believe. And that is the fate of all jurors in any trial.
Rashōmon, the title of the film, loosely translates as ‘confusion’. A bit like the question about whether a tree that falls in the forest without any witnesses would make a sound, the Rashōmon effect is the extreme doubt you get when you hear contradictory versions of the same events. Is there such a thing as truth?
A few days ago, the Degiorgio brothers, serving the dawning days of a 40-year prison sentence for killing Daphne Caruana Galizia, published through their lawyers what they swore to be the truth. In some places, their statement corroborates independent evidence and might very well be true. In some other places, the horseshit calls itself like the stubborn smear at the bottom of your shoe.
Without expressly admitting they were part of the armed gang who attempted to rob the HSBC headquarters 13 years ago, they named former ministers Carmelo Abela and Chris Cardona as participants in that crime. At least for some time, both Abela and Cardona were in the frame of police investigations into that heist.
Abela recently admitted to remembering having forgotten answering investigators’ questions. Cardona was also questioned but was never charged. Both vehemently deny any wrongdoing but neither denies it vehemently enough to bother to sue the Degiorgios for defamation. Perhaps the former ministers feel they have no reputation to protect.
Why did the Degiorgios dredge up crimes they were never charged with while serving a long sentence for a crime for which they’ve been convicted? Because they want to trade the information they have for time off from their prison sentence. They say they want to give evidence about unspecified murders and bombings.
Is there such a thing as truth?- Manuel Delia
For now, they’re only really specific about the HSBC heist because the alleged involvement of former ministers is bound to sharpen the public’s focus on their fate. But remember, the information they have can only get them time off if it proves by independent corroborating evidence to be true. That’s something to think about.
In the same statement, the Degiorgios appear to proclaim Yorgen Fenech innocent of the murder of Caruana Galizia. Their writing is broadly incoherent, and their logic muddled. But the effect of what they say is limpidly intended: to leave you with the impression Yorgen Fenech didn’t do it.
They say Melvin Theuma (who hired them to kill Caruana Galizia) never mentioned Fenech to them, which makes sense because Theuma said as much when he gave evidence in court. The Degiorgios then say they were supposed to collect their fee from “someone important in the government with an office in Valletta”, which is a not-so-subtle reference to Cardona.
Why are they saying this? It doesn’t help them get time off from their prison time, so the objective of this line needs to be different from all the talk about who robbed HSBC. Evidence of events that happened before his arrest in 2019 showed that Fenech coughed up money to support the Degiorgios after their arrest in 2017. That was confirmed in the tapes recorded surreptitiously by Theuma and heard in court.
Could Fenech still be supporting the Degiorgios? The idea of pinning Daphne’s murder on Cardona is not new. Fenech received a letter ostensibly written by Keith Schembri and delivered to him by their common doctor telling Fenech how to shift it on Cardona.
Cardona – the man who promised on TV to repay any slight with the wielding of axes – is such an obvious candidate for “the possible someone else” that Fenech’s defence might very well believe if enough people believe Cardona might have done it, jurors would be given enough unreasonable doubt to acquit Fenech. It wouldn’t matter whether it’s true or not. That’s the Rashōmon effect.
While you struggle through the fog, here’s something to remember. We heard Fenech’s voice in open court, spoken without the speaker’s knowledge of being recorded, tell the middleman in the murder of Caruana Galizia: “You brought a man from A to Z, but Goddamnit I have good reason to be worried ... the man who fixes the thing has as big a problem as the man who does it.”
This is not the 12th century. Sometimes, in the forest, there’s a tape recorder capturing what really happened.
For the record, Fenech denies any wrongdoing. He remains presumed innocent.