The phone is not the same one that Schembri had claimed to have lost back in November 2019. 

In a sitting last month, Judge Lawrence Mintoff, who is presiding over the case, ordered that Fenech’s lawyers be given access to all data obtained from the phone, despite opposition from the police. 

It was during this sitting that State Advocate Chris Soler declared in court that there would be no appeal from the decree and that the data would be handed over without delay. 

However, some days later, the parties in the case were notified that an appeal had in fact been submitted. 

The defence noted that this meant that either there was already an intention to appeal when the court was being told that its order would be complied with, or that something had happened since the last sitting that had caused the State Advocate to change his mind. 

“Both scenarios are very worrying and a matter of concern,” lawyer Charles Mercieca said. “It is the impartiality, the integrity and the profoundness of the investigators and the investigations which are being scrutinised. This impartiality and integrity find no comfort in the behaviour, at times even nebulous, shown by the police commissioner.”

When the matter of Schembri’s phone first came up, the police noted that the phone could not be handed over because it formed part of a magisterial inquiry and could therefore not be submitted in the acts of the case. 

Despite this, the judge ordered that the data be handed over to Fenech’s legal team, which maintains that the phone contains information that could be crucial to their client’s case. 

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