Some things only seem to happen in Gozo. This morning I was in court waiting for the criminal sitting to start at ten. Suddenly the court registrar appeared from the magistrate chambers informing us that there was a bomb threat and therefore all the cases were being re-scheduled for another date. The sittings we had today were rescheduled from a previous date in which funnily enough there was a bomb threat too.

In Malta we are used to have such threats each and ever Monday and these instances have become so common that we tend to joke about them. However, in Gozo these are rare instances and therefore we tend not to take them so lightly.

The problem however is that we do not have a bomb disposal unit in Gozo and therefore we have to get experts over from Malta. While we were being evacuated from the Court buildings, arrangements were still being done for the bomb disposal unit to cross over from Malta. Various police officers who were at court as part of the various proceedings scheduled for the day, searched the premises but they are no experts and are not equipped or trained for such instances. I really considered this as being unfair and very unprofessional – but they had to obey orders. They were still in their uniforms and they were wearing no protective clothing – I think that they do not have any clothing relating to explosives anyway.

The whole point is this, that even if these scares are merely ploys and tactics by someone who does not like coming to court, we should have a bomb disposal unit. We may have hundreds of scares which may be false but this does not mean that we should not have a trained unit in case something really happens.