“This is a country that is accepting that crimes happen without being solved,” Kevin Grech was quoted saying, 45 years after his teenage sister was killed by a parcel bomb sent to their home.

His painful declaration is no doubt shared by the loved ones of victims of the impunity that reigned supreme – as it still does – over the years and on the watch of different administrations. It ranges from the violence and oppression of the most turbulent times in this country’s political history to the many instances where the colour of money has been brighter than the rule of law.

Karin Grech, Lino Cauchi and Raymond Caruana come to mind immediately but there could be others. To this very day, their families continue to express deep sorrow at having been abandoned by the state. Compensation, when given, is hardly adequate to bring closure.

Sadly, history keeps repeating itself. Though overall crimes rates are down, there remains a clear problem with crimes committed with the involvement of the state or its ‘agents’.

That emerges very clearly when reading the judgment awarding €615,000 to Cauchi’s heirs and comparing it to the conclusions drawn by the public inquiry into Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder.

The findings of the Caruana Galizia are still fresh in everybody’s minds and do not need repeating but it bears quoting some of the comments made by Mr Justice Francesco Depasquale in his judgment a few days ago.

“… Lino Cachi was murdered because he knew too much about the intrigue and corruption committed by Lorry Sant, Pio Camilleri and their clique…

“At this stage, the court notes that the whole investigation, from Lino Cauchi’s death, presumably on February 15, 1982 to this day demonstrates a total failure in the way the investigation was conducted, which failure means that, today, it is almost impossible for Lino Cauchi’s family to ever know what Lino Cauchi actually went through…

“It results that the state failed [Cauchi’s] family throughout the whole process of the investigation but, particularly, in the first months and years after Lino Cauchi’s death by refusing to commence investigations by the inquiring magistrate and, instead, kept everything under its control and, thus, essential evidence that could have been compiled in the first hours and days after Lino Cauchi’s disappearance has been lost forever.”

As happened in the Bidnija murder, the police had also tried to derail investigations by working on the theory that Cauchi could have left the country because of money he owed.

The only arrest the police made – bar much later, in 2001, when Camilleri was held after information they had received – was that of Cauchi’s wife, about a year after his disappearance. She was arrested for about nine hours after the investigator at the time, Anġlu Farrugia, thought she looked very calm when she posed for photographs for the press.

The message emerging from such awful episodes is that people must put pressure on the powers that be for any meaningful action to be taken.

A lot depends on the rule of law and the separation of powers. As Chief Justice Emeritus Vincent Degaetano had enunciated in a speech in late 2021, for separation of powers to be practical and effective, such power cannot be “concentrated in the hands of one individual or a number of individuals and, more importantly, that those enacting the law are not the same as those deciding on its application in practice”.

The implementation of laws by state agents must be subject to independent verification and checks, he also insisted.

Perhaps, then, criminal history will not repeat itself with such ease.