Amnesty offered to reassure Nicholas Azzopardi’s family

By offering an amnesty to informants in the Nicholas Azzopardi case, the Government was not doubting the outcome of the two inquiries held but was simply seeking another way to give the family peace of mind, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said yesterday. Dr Gonzi said the inquiries “spoke for themselves” but despite this, “there were people who were still casting doubts”. He said the purpose of offering an amnesty was to encourage anyone with information to come forward because the Government understood that the family expected to have its questions answered. “The family of the deceased person deserve to have certainty as far as humanly possible and they would be satisfied that the justice system has given them all it could to put their minds at rest,” he said. Dr Gonzi said that whether all their questions would be answered did not depend on him, on the Government or the authorities “but at least we would have taken all the measures possible to ensure justice is done”. Mr Azzopardi fell off a bastion behind the police headquarters in Floriana four years ago while he was in police custody. He died a few days after the fall but not before claiming from his hospital bed that he had...