Man remanded in custody over Ħamrun assault which left victim grievously injured

A man has been remanded in custody after being charged in connection with an assault in Ħamrun that left a Syrian man grievously injured.

Hussein Sheikh Ahmat 36, a Swedish citizen who was born in Syria, was arraigned before magistrate Giannella Camilleri Busuttil charged with causing grievous bodily harm to a co-national, as well as with insulting and threatening him in excess of the limits of provocation and in breach of the Criminal Code and with breaching the peace.

The prosecution requested the court issue a protection order until proceedings were concluded and to bind the defendant to the payment of compensation to the victim, should he be convicted.

The incident took place on July 8, in Triq il-Kbira San Ġużepp, in Ħamrun, where a motorcycle rider and pillion passenger stopped and proceeded to beat the victim.

Inspector Sarah Kathleen Zerafa told the court that one of the men who had been on the motorcycle was recognised after his arrest in connection with another crime that took place between Saturday and Sunday. The police are understood to still be looking for the second man.

In court on Monday, Ahmat’s defence lawyer, Jacob Magri, pointed out that the arrest warrant for his client had been issued just two hours before he was taken into custody and had been issued by the same magistrate that his client was now being arraigned in front of.

He argued that this meant that when it issued the arrest warrant, the court had already taken a position with regards to the issue of whether the police had acted with reasonable suspicion.

This claim was rebutted by prosecutor Ramon Bonett Sladden, representing the Office of the Attorney General together with Julian Scicluna, who argued that the only result of this situation would be that the court would simply have a fuller picture of the event.

Magri insisted that when it came to the validation of the arrest in a few moments, the court would be deciding about the reasonable suspicion which it had already declared existed.

The court’s hands were tied to an extent, said the lawyer, asking the magistrate to recuse herself or abstain, while conceding that there was no specific provision for this scenario in the law.

Bonnett Sladden protested that the defence would have objected regardless of the basis for the arrest. It was “unthinkable” to request the substitution of the duty magistrate, said the prosecutor.

The magistrate retired to chambers for some 30 minutes, before returned to the courtroom and informing the parties that she would not be abstaining, which meant that the defence would have to request her recusal. The magistrate asked the defence to dictate a note in the records of the case, stating the reasons for which it was requesting this.

In this case, Magri said, the magistrate was presiding over an arraignment in proceedings where just two hours ago, the same sitting magistrate had expressed an opinion on the issue when she decided that there was reasonable suspicion to justify a warrant of arrest. “From that time till now, there had been no developments or information emerging from the investigation, bar the taking of a statement in which the defendant had not replied to any of his interrogators’ questions,” argued the lawyer.

After a series of increasingly technical arguments and counter-arguments, the arraignment came to an end at around 6:30pm - some three hours after it started - with the magistrate rejecting the request for her recusal and declaring the arrest to be valid. A subsequent bail request by the defence was also refused.