Legal experts have raised doubts over whether the prime minister has the power to fulfil his promise to publish the conclusions of a magisterial inquiry into the death of construction collapse victim Jean Paul Sofia.
Robert Abela made the pledge in an interview on Thursday amid public outrage after government MPs vetoed a request for a public inquiry into the case.
The prime minister vowed to publish the conclusions of a magisterial inquiry into the 20-year-old’s death on a construction site in his first comments since government MPs voted against a motion calling for a public inquiry.
However, former Nationalist MP and criminal lawyer Jason Azzopardi insisted that he could not make such a promise because he requires the permission of the attorney general to publish the findings.
“No report of a magisterial inquiry can be issued without the permission of the attorney general (AG), which he never gives to anyone who is not a victim or directly involved in the inquiry. Ever,” Azzopardi wrote on Facebook.
“So can you, please, explain to me how the prime minister declared that he will have such a report in hand?”
According to Article 518 of the criminal code, the acts and documents of the courts of criminal justice shall not be open to inspection without the special permission of the court or the attorney general.
It also says that the procès-verbal – the case file – is open to inspection but only at the discretion of the attorney general. This does not apply if the party forms part of the case.
Azzopardi said the government was not a party to the case and will not have access to the inquiry findings and neither the procès-verbal.
Sources close to the government maintain, however, that the inquiry conclusions will be publicly available once they are filed in court as part of any criminal proceedings. Despite this, anyone could obtain a copy through a party to the case.
However, legal sources told Times of Malta that this would apply to documents filed as part of the case but not the procès-verbal, which is a court document protected at law.
Abela gave the interview to MaltaToday a day after he and his parliamentary group voted against the parliamentary motion calling for a public inquiry.
The victim’s mother, Isabelle Bonnici has been leading the campaign for a public inquiry, insisting that is the only way to examine the processes and political decisions that led the government to grant public land to the developers of the site at the Corradino site.
“We must know what went wrong from the get-go. How was that land granted to those developers? Was there any due diligence done on them? Did public officials do all that was expected of them to ensure that the developers were competent, responsible and trustworthy enough to be trusted with public land? What funds, if any, were they granted,” she asked in a recent Times of Malta interview.
Magisterial inquiries attempt to determine criminal responsibility in a case while public inquiries examine broader systemic and governance issues. Abela has repeatedly insisted only a magisterial investigation could bring about justice.