Your Correspondent: The Magistrate’s last sigh

It was the late 1980s. Yellowed, peeling paint. Noisy floorboards. Tendrils tickled the timeless stale and gloomy air of the tired, dull courtroom. Wisteria creeping in through the gaps of the sash windows from the abundant Supreme Court gardens.

Invariably, two elderly pensioners had taken the first seats. Amidst the regulars brought in by the Police prosecutors - drunks, vagrants, traffic offenders - there were occasional surprises. Complex, serious or minor, almost every incident and case started its journey in the Magistrates Court.

Most mornings, for a couple of decades, as a Chronicle reporter this was my first port of call. The two pensioners, veteran observers of the Magistrate and the Justices of the Peace, would confer before whispering to me the likely decision that was about to land on the accused. If they had been giving me hints for the horses, I would have soon been a wealthy man!

It’s the nature of Gibraltar as a small country that whether you are the Editor of the Chronicle, parish pump and national newspaper, or even the Chief Minister, you deal with issues that range from engaging with a Foreign Minister to listening to pensioners unhappy at the wait for repairs to their shutters. Nothing too big or too small, but always a treadmill of activity.

So too has been the lot for Gibraltar’s magistrates and most remarkably in more recent history the quotidian tasks that faced the late Felix Pizzarello.

All stand! The door would fling open. Over-watched indifferently by the fixed gazes of the lion and unicorn, perched in the Royal Arms heading the wooden panel behind him, Felix would briskly take his seat and plunge into the business of the day. “Okay...”

Having sat so often in that courtroom, lawyers and prisoners entering and exiting, I wanted to add to Richard Garcia’s fine formal obituary in this newspaper, with a sketch of the judge who, as I wrote in an opinion piece some years ago, was exceptional in the way in which, alone, he stood up to colonialism and stood firm defending the principles of fairness and justice.

But, before referring to what he went through with the 1988 IRA incident, there was one case in particular that struck me as an illustration of how fair and humane he was as a judge.

Incredibly, in the 1980s the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, was pressing the Gibraltar Government to decriminalise homosexuality. The pressure was on from a European Court of Human Rights decision and human rights organisations including Stonewall. So, eventually, in 1993 the government and opposition in Gibraltar passed the law by a free vote, rather than it being a policy of the then GSLP government led by Joe Bossano or indeed the previous AACR.

One day in the late 1980s the Police prosecution produced a visibly mortified prisoner before the Magistrate. His crime, from the evidence produced, was simply that he had been acting ‘suspiciously’. He was staying in the Montarik Hotel and at his beside police had discover a book, The Gay Guide to Europe….and a tub of vaseline.

A combination of frustration and disappointment crossed Felix’s faces as he visibly restrained his anger at the police wasting the court’s time and humiliating the unfortunate tourist. With a deep sigh, stifling his annoyance, and a wave of his hand, he dismissed the case outright.

His sense of fairness and justice in the application of the law would of course be most tested by one of the most significant news events in Gibraltar of the 20th century, the shooting of three IRA operatives on the Rock by the SAS soldiers in March 1988. It’s a hugely complex story involving many players and massive media coverage. But relevant here was the fact that the Thatcher government assumed and certainly wanted Felix, in his capacity as Coroner, to swiftly sign off the death certificates and allow a quick repatriation of the three bodies.

When he insisted on an inquest with jury a whole machinery was set off to discredit him and to try and reverse that decision. If it couldn’t be stopped Britain wanted someone else to handle the case.

The Sun was on the warpath and an editorial headed ‘Felix the Fool’ was just part of a general process of trying to shut down any scrutiny of what had happened.

In informed circles at the time the buzz was that Felix had been heard in his office (make of that what you will given informed reports that the courtroom was later bugged as soldiers gave evidence) saying that, in certain circumstances, ‘this could be murder’.

It must have been an incredible few months as he pushed on to ensure that Gibraltar stuck to the principles of its justice system.

On April 11 1988, just over a month after the shootings Michael Colvin MP, then APPG Gibraltar chair, wrote to the Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe, on the back of a visit to the Rock he had just made. On the issue of the Inquest into the IRA shooting he said: “People I talked to said that Gibraltarians were supportive of the SAS action, but it seemed clear that the inquest should be before a strong coroner and perhaps they should import one for the occasion - and a jury (I am told that no challenges of jurors are to be permitted.)”

Some days later, in a comment regarding FCO’s responding to the letter from Colvin, MCS Weston at the Foreign Office sent a circular to officials, including then Europe Minister Lynda Chalker, in which he confirmed that “the possibility of appointing a different Coroner is being looked into.”

In the event Pizzarello’s conduct of the inquiry stood up to scrutiny. The European Commission of Human Rights declared that as regards the Inquest, the Commission was “impressed by the thoroughness of its procedure. It lasted 19 days, involved the hearing in public of 79 witnesses who were subject to extensive examination and sometimes rigorous cross-examination.”

Pizzarello stood his ground with the rigour you might expect from a character in a Jane Austen novel. Privately helpful, and always careful to measure his words, if he trusted you, you felt the weight of that trust.

And, whilst the IRA inquest would unfold with staggering twists and turns and lasting consequences, it was not the only major drama to come before the courtroom.

The Enrique Bolin case in 1989 was dramatic for several reasons. Bolin was not only found guilty of cocaine possession. He had sailed into Gibraltar waters on a yacht where, apart from the drugs, other material including nasty videos were mentioned in the evidence (even though he was not charged in relation to these). Astonishingly, Bolin tried to claim immunity because of his status as a Spanish senator and learned, the hard way, that Gibraltar is a different jurisdiction!

It was all too much for the visibly decadent Bolin. As the sentence was read out he stiffened with a startlingly loud cracking noise emanating from his body as he slipped to the floor stiff as a slab of bacalao.

Then, in August 1992, an astonishing arrest was made at sea off the Rock onboard HMS Argonaut. Roderick Newall a former elite soldier was brought into Gibraltar for extradition to Jersey. His arrest for patricide and matricide came whilst the search for his brother Mark was also underway in France.

The event made a huge splash in the British press and also in Jersey where the killings had taken place. John Blackburn Gittings, the then Attorney General, was reported as saying that Felix Pizzarello had commented to him on the unusual arrest at sea saying: “I don’t like the sound of this; it sounds like kidnapping”.

The saga - including several escape attempts, suitcases with money, and even the bugging of the hotel room of prosecution lawyer Desmond da Silva - would last until November 1993 when he finally agreed a deal with the Jersey authorities and flew to the island to show the authorities where the bodies were buried.

Of the personalities appearing before Judge Pizzarello the most regular, as defence lawyer, was Chris Finch who, during the Newall case, slipped in the Piazzella just outside his then office. Finch appeared the next day in court escorted on a wheelchair with his leg thrust forward in a plaster cast and prompting the star UK tabloid-hack Tim Brown to declare to UK readers that Finch had made his entrance to Pizzarello’s courtroom ‘like Ironside’.

The obituary in The Times was well deserved. This was an exceptional man who was willing to stand up against the heavy frowns of the Thatcher establishment.

I remember, after the piece I wrote describing Felix as having stood up alone to colonialism, he briefly broke his usual rule of reticence and, as he passed me in Main Street, Felix delivered a heartfelt ‘Thank you’ and walked on. He continued to refuse all my requests for interview decades after the events.

From the mundane to the dramatic, Felix Pizzarello always took the day’s work in his stride. Things just had to be done properly. You knew when he was unhappy if things were not done right.

I can almost hear that last sigh at the end of a long day and him declaring “Alright!”, folding his papers and swiftly disappearing to his backroom office.
‘All stand’.

Bedside reading: Tom Stoppard Indian ink
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