The Degiorgios mentioned the three bombs that left individuals badly injured between 2012 and 2017 as part of the many criminal activities that the “circle” is guilty of. Daphne Caruana Galizia happened to have given coverage to these bombs. Here is what she wrote in one of her articles “Car bomb explosion victim named as John Camilleri k/a Giovanni tas-Sapun” dated 31st October 2016. What one must ask is if whether Daphne was spot on and whether she was stepping on the toes of the big barunijiet.
“A man – John Camilleri 67 known as Giovanni tas-Sapun of St Paul’s Bay – has been killed in a car-bomb explosion in Bugibba. I woke to the sound of sirens blasting down Burmarrad hill and they didn’t stop for half an hour. A major traffic accident perhaps but there hasn’t been one on that stretch of road for years not since it was remade.
And then the news: another bomb in another car and another man dead. And I thought there goes another diesel smuggler. Because the discernible pattern in criminal assassinations over the last few years in Malta is that diesel smugglers are blown up by bombs in their cars and drug smugglers are shot dead by hired hitmen.
And everybody pretends there’s no pattern. The diesel smugglers are described as ‘fishermen’ or ‘restaurateurs’ and the drug smugglers are called long-distance lorry drivers or hauliers or ‘unemployed family men’ or ‘businessmen’ though some of them are occasionally described as ‘known to the police’.
There was one exception last month: a haulier who was blown up by a car bomb rather than shot.But then the bomb was different to the ones used for diesel smugglers: it was packed with tacks nails and ball-bearings and didn’t kill him but led to his legs being amputated.
Today’s dead man too is a ‘businessman’ who is ‘known to the police’. The legitimate side of his business is tiles and bathroom fittings.
The National Statistics Office in figures released five days ago says that it calculates “prostitution and illegal drugs” as making for €17.1 million of Malta’s gross domestic product last year. Quite frankly I think that’s a conservative estimate.”
Car bomb explosion victim named as John Camilleri k/a Giovanni tas-Sapun
