In the last year, three shocking cases of alleged abduction reached the courts, however, the crime still remains rare in Malta.

Three suspects were recently charged after they allegedly bundled a man into a car, tied him to a tree in a woodland and then held him against his will in a Sliema hotel in an attempt to extort money from him.

Their plan was foiled when they were preparing to move him to another location and were caught after the victim managed to escape and call for help.

Last November, a terrorised kidnapped woman was found inside a Buġibba apartment and her alleged abductors were arraigned. The 50-year-old was snatched from her Msida home and a ransom was demanded from her son, who was told he would not see his mother again unless he paid up.

The third case involves a Syrian man who was allegedly abducted by his compatriots and told he would be raped, injected with drugs and footage posted on social media unless he left Malta.

Five men have been charged with abduction. 

Such cases are investigated by police officers of the violent crimes unit within the major crimes department, together with the district officers, the vice squad and the terrorism unit, if the case required, the police said, adding that it also had certified and skilled negotiators if their intervention was needed.

In the three cases investigated so far, the police said: “we always strive to free the victims and arrest the abductors and that is why we have negotiators to solve these cases without any violence.”

As to whether the close cases of alleged abductions marked the rise of a new form of crime, historian Eddie Attard ascertained they were a new phenomenon but not a concern as kidnapping was unlikely to take root in Malta.

A vigil held last year for a young girl whose biological mother took her out of Malta. A court last week declared it an abduction. Photo: Mark Zammit Cordina

“It is not a crime we will be hearing a lot of,” he predicted, “because it is hard to hide people on such a small island and it costs money to keep a kidnapped person,” adding “there are easier ways to commit a crime with less risk and expenses.”

Kidnapping for a ransom, a form of theft, is associated with the Mafia and was also big in Italy with the Red Brigades, a far-left guerrilla group that targeted wealthy persons, Attard recalled. The police said none of the recent cases were linked to organised crime.

Speaking of the rarity of the crime in Malta, Attard could only recall a 2012 case of a prostitution ring that saw a group of women locked in a farmhouse and forced to have sex. It could be considered a form of abduction, although it was a case of sex slavery and human trafficking, he said.

Attard also referred to the Lino Cauchi case, which is in the spotlight again as his heir’s 40-year-long quest for justice resumes. The accountant was murdered after he mysteriously disappeared and,therefore, the crime was considered a homicide rather than a kidnapping.

A form of abduction in Malta was related to children of separated couples, where one parent without custody would take them from the other.

The week before last,  in fact, a man was accused of threatening to kidnap his children so his wife would never see them again.

And a court recently declared that the mother of a young foster girl had abducted her by taking her out of Malta.

“Twenty years ago, we did not talk about the crimes of today and, in 20 years’ time, we will be talking of crimes we never heard of,” Attard said, adding that, in the 1970s, it was thought that drugs would not enter Malta. Today, their trafficking and possession are one of the biggest offences in the country while typical crimes in Malta, which has seen a rise in rape and domestic violence, include theft and injuries through fights.