The Police Force is continuing to flatly ignore requests from European parliamentarian David Casa to afford him some form of protection after the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia and after Casa has continued to spearhead many of the corruption revelations and allegations made by the slain journalist in the EU’s highest institutions.
While Casa has confirmed that the police have made no approach to him since he revealed last Sunday that his requests to them for protection had been totally ignored. Follow-up questions sent to the police by this newspaper on the matter were not answered.
Casa’s lawyers have, in fact, written directly to the Police Commissioner requesting police protection but to no avail as they have not had any answers yet either.
In an interview with this newspaper last Sunday, Casa said he has been receiving regular threats ever since the latest 17 Black revelations. But he says his pleas for police protection, mainly for his family in Malta, have been ignored.
The MEP said he has received suspicious calls originating in Azerbaijan, calls from withheld numbers and other forms of threats on the social media. “Why should I have to go to the police for protection?” he said. “Why do I have to go before the European Parliament and say that my life is not as it was before? The Police Commissioner has done nothing. They used to say that Daphne Caruana Galizia refused police protection. Well I have asked for protection but have received nothing more than blah, blah, blah,” Casa told this newspaper.
He said he was more worried about his family and had asked for protection for them: “My lawyer made the request and the police told him they were looking into it but nothing has happened since then.”
Promising that he would not shut up because he represents the people, Casa says he finds courage in thinking about the situation his friend Daphne Caruana Galizia had gone through, which was even worse than his. “She could not even go to the festa. She had her bank accounts frozen. At times she would tell me that she felt safer indoors and would rather not go out to dinner.”
Casa believes the threats are directly related to his work in respect of Pilatus Bank and 17 Black. He says he was forced to go to the European institutions after seeing that the Maltese authorities lacked the will to investigate Pilatus Bank. His efforts have led to a number of EP resolutions and fact-finding missions. “Thanks to this pressure, Pilatus Bank closed down and the FIAU (Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit) was forced to change its modus operandi,” he says.
“I knew that I was fighting a government and some very powerful people, including some in Azerbaijan. I knew that I would be fighting criminals, people who would stop at nothing. We have a clear example in what happened to Daphne. I know that these people can use undemocratic methods – like how Pilatus Bank threatened media houses with law suits running into the millions.”