The only evidence against murder suspect Adrian Agius was the hearsay testimony of “self-confessed serial killer Vincent Muscat”, a court was told about the man accused of orchestrating the murder of lawyer Carmel Chircop. 

The court was hearing final submissions in a case filed by Agius’s lawyers last October after three requests for bail were shot down by the Magistrates’ Court.

The court is presiding over the murder compilation against Agius, his brother Robert, their alleged associate Jamie Vella and alleged hitman George Degiorgio. 

In two of those decrees, the court cited the notion of public disorder as an additional ground to justify the refusal of release from preventive arrest in respect of Adrian Agius who is protesting his innocence in relation to the 2013 murder.

Chircop was gunned down in the early hours of October 8, 2013, inside a Birkirkara garage complex when on his way to work.  

His co-accused are also facing charges allegedly linking them to the 2017 car bomb explosion that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia. 

Adrian Agius had nothing to do with that case and his sole misfortune lay in the fact that he was arraigned alongside the other co-accused and that he was known by the family nickname of “Ta’ Maksar,” argued his lawyer Alfred Abela.

Meanwhile, the accused had already spent 14 months in preventive custody.

The scene of Carmel Chircop's murder in 2015.

The notion of public disorder did not feature under Maltese law and jurisprudence and had only been brought up in cases linked to the Caruana Galizia assassination, the drive-by shooting of Lassana Cisse and the case of alleged drug lord Jordan Azzopardi, said Abela.

Citing European Court of Human Rights case law, the lawyer stressed that public disorder could only serve as grounds to deny bail “in so far as domestic law” recognised that notion. 

That was not the case under Maltese law, said the lawyer, pointing out further that public disorder was only explicitly mentioned under the Immigration Act, but not under the Criminal Code. 

Tampering with evidence 'not possible'

That law spoke of specific grounds for denying bail, namely the fear of tampering with evidence, the fear of absconding and the fear of future crimes being committed if a suspect were to be released from arrest. 

In this case, no evidence produced in the ongoing compilation proceedings justified the perceived fear of public disorder.

The only person implicating Agius in such alleged criminal conspiracy was Vincent Muscat, known as il-Koħħu, who was the prosecution’s star witness and who had named other players in the conspiracy.

All are currently behind bars, so how could there be tampering with evidence, asked the lawyer.

“[Muscat] also spoke about that politician and the other about whom nothing had been done. But I won’t even go there,” Abela said. 

Agius had an almost untainted criminal record and had nothing to do with the Caruana Galizia murder. 

There was no footage, no mobile data, triangulation, DNA material or even witnesses to support the charges against him.

There was nothing except Muscat’s testimony and that ran counter to testimonies supplied by other witnesses including Chircop’s widow who told the court how she viewed Agius as an upright man.

A well-planned murder

AG lawyer Charlene Camilleri Zarb rebutted those arguments, highlighting the “very serious charges” which were always to be taken into consideration.

It was acknowledged that Agius was not charged with the murder of Caruana Galizia but as the mastermind in the Chircop case, but evidence showed that murder “was not instantaneous but well planned.”

Hitmen were engaged, weapons were supplied and an escape route was clearly mapped out.

And although Agius was not accused over the Caruana Galizia murder, his co-accused were parties in the same criminal organisation, said the lawyer, citing a decision by the Constitutional Court in a separate case concerning the Degiorgios where the court made reference to “a criminal web” and a real risk which justified refusal of bail.

But that last argument prompted a final rebuttal by Agius’s lawyer.

“He has no request for pardon to make, nothing to disclose, no ministers to name. He is innocent and simply wants to prove his innocence.

“After spending some five years under arrest and after being acquitted upon trial, I will turn to Adrian and tell him that he has missed his son growing up, Christmases and all the rest when all along he was innocent.”

The court, presided over by Mr Justice Francesco Depasquale, adjourned the case for judgment in May, while Agius was escorted away by armed security guards. 

Lawyers Abela and Rene’ Darmanin assisted the applicant.  AG lawyers Charlene Camilleri Zarb, Maurizio Cordina, George Camilleri represented the respondents.