Stiff sentence for Paceville car burglar

A man has been jailed for 30 months after a court dismissed his unlikely claim of having broken into a vehicle to sleep in it, thinking it belonged to his friend.

Hamza Kamel El Bakoush had been accused of two counts of aggravated theft, three counts of voluntary damage, as well as with handling stolen goods, all committed on the same morning in April 2014 in St Julian's.

Inspector Daryl Borg, prosecuting, had explained to the court that the Libyan national had been detained after bouncers on duty outside a nightclub in Paceville had alerted the police to the man, who they saw damaging a parked car. Upon his arrest inside the car, El Bakoush was found to be carrying items that had been stolen from another vehicle that night. These included a pair of designer sunglasses, a Samsung mobile phone, a purse containing cash and a Fuji camera.

Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech heard one woman testify to returning to her Peugeot in the early hours of the morning to find her rear window smashed. A jacket, later found to belong to the accused, had been forgotten on the driver's seat.

The second victim testified to being informed by the police that El Bakoush had been arrested inside his Pajero after apparently breaking the window with a stone, which was also found inside the car.

The damage to the car had cost him €837 to fix, the owner told the court, saying that credit notes and cash which had been in the car had also disappeared.

A police sergeant had testified to there having been a number of similar break-ins in the area.

The accused had given the police a series of unlikely explanations as to how he got there, initially saying that he had rowed with his girlfriend and, deciding to wait for her inside the car, had smashed the window to open the door as he wasn't carrying the key.

In a statement he released whilst in police custody, El Bakoush then claimed to have mistaken the vehicle for on belonging to an unnamed friend of his. He had wanted to take a nap inside it, he said, only to realise his mistake the next morning when he looked at the number plates. He claimed to have given the jacket to a friend who had been feeling cold and not to have seen it since.

The man's tall tales failed to sway the magistrate, however, who pronounced him guilty of the charges, jailing him for 30 months.