Man facing multiple charges jailed for 18 months

A Libyan man with a number of pending accusations of theft using appalling violence, has been jailed for 18 months for grievously injuring a Maltese man in Paola last August.

31 year-old Rawad Briga Abdelsalam, who works in a quarry, admitted to causing grievous bodily harm to a young Maltese man whom he mugged and robbed of his cash and mobile phone, while threatening to kill him.

This was not the first such accusation levelled against Abdelsalam.

In September, he was accused of brutally slashing a woman's throat during another mugging, which also took place in August. In that case, the Libyan had been charged with attempted homicide as well as with grievously injuring and causing permanent disfigurement to the woman and stealing her handbag, which contained a smartphone and €20 in cash.

Other news reports indicate that he had been convicted of a similar bag-snatch theft in 2014. Briga Abdelsalam was today also charged with relapsing, as well as breaching the peace, carrying a weapon at the time of the commission of a violent offence and breaching the peace.

In a judgement published this morning, Magistrate Joe Mifsud jailed the man for 18 months after taking into account the accused's early guilty plea and his assistance in the prosecution of his accomplice. The accused had injured the victim in this case, the court noted, while the accomplice had stolen the items.

Police inspectors Joseph Mercieca and Hubert Cini prosecuted.