Die Welt, one of Germany’s top newspapers, has published a detailed story on the case of Mike Mansholt, a young German man whose body was found at the foot of Dingli cliffs next to his bike but missing his shoes and his camera. He had no fractures or any bodily evidence of a fall and was found in a spot that is an impossible landing point from a fall down the cliffs.
And when his body was returned to the family it was missing his organs. No explanation was ever given for this.
Mike’s family found an impenetrable barrier of indifference and silence by the Maltese authorities who would just not even try to answer reasonable questions about what could have happened to the boy.
Last December this website published a translation of another detailed report of the story published on Nordwest Zeitung. That link provides a lot of background to the events of the case.
In January the Attorney General decided to ask the Magistrate the reopen the inquiry into Mike Mansholt’s death because that can happen. We have not had news since then.
Die Welt reports that the undertaker in Germany, who opened the coffin after the transportation of Mike’s remains called the German police. He did this because the body had not been embalmed. The transportation of bodies according to law requires embalming. It is not sufficient to board bodies on planes in a zinc coffin unless they are embalmed.
German police, therefore, got involved in the case. The undertaker also informed the authorities the body was too light. After a second autopsy, it was determined Mike’s organs were missing from his body. This attracted the attention of the Oldenburg prosecution service.
The prosecutor spoke to the undertaker and to father Mike’s father and discussed oddities in the case. An investigation was launched, trying to determine Mike’s time and cause of death. The second autopsy in Germany ruled out Malta’s conclusion that Mike Mansholt fractured his back and died as a result of a fall. He had no fractures meaning a fall was ruled out. Not only because of the missing organs, but also because of the omitted embalming, the cause of death could no longer be determined as the decomposition had advanced too much.
In an interview to Die Welt, Mike’s father Bernd says he has effectively given up on ever getting answers from the Maltese authorities. They have quite literally worn him down. He sold his goldsmith business, rented out his house in Oldenburg and is now sailing with his new wife and two children around the Mediterranean trying to put his life back together again.
He has to do so without any reasonable closure on what brought about his son’s death.
Die Welt sought comments from the Maltese authorities. The Attorney General and the Justice Ministry ignored them. The Police hung on themselves a medal: “objectively, there are no doubts with regards to the fairness, independence and objectivity of the investigations”.
Die Welt doesn’t buy it. Nor do its readers. Many comments wonder how a corrupt country like Malta ever made it into the EU. It is a shady tax haven where journalists are killed. Ignoring the mysterious death of a young German lad is hardly surprising.
Many people seek justice in Malta. It will only be dispensed here if the government has an interest.
This post is brought to you with the help of a German-speaking reader of this website.