Fabio Psaila back in the dock over HSBC heist

Fabio Psaila, 36 of Sta. Venera, faced a magistrate this morning as HSBC bank employees explained the damage caused to their cars by stray bullets fired during a daring heist gone wrong in June 2010.

HSBC employees recounted how they found their cars riddled with bullet holes as they were parked outside the bank's headquarters in Qormi on 28 June 2010, after a group of armed men engaged in a gun battle with police officers who foiled their heist.

Psaila is charged with the attempted murder of two police officers, the attempted heist on the HSBC bank's vault in Qormi and another hold-up gone wrong in November 2011 on jeweller Michael Mizzi and his son Silvio.

It was alleged that Psaila was nicknamed 'The General' by former police inspector David Gatt, a lawyer who now stands separately charged of being the mastermind of the criminal organisation that plotted the heist. Police have insisted that Gatt styled his gang on that of the mafia by borrowing similar terms from the Sicilian mafia to describe his henchmen.

During this morning's sittings, HSBC employees testified to having found their windscreens shattered, doors holed and damaged interiors. One car owner explained that her car sustained some €2,000 worth of damage by bullets.

Some 60 shots were allegedly fired at the police who thwarted the hold-up in Qormi in June 2010, while another heist planned on jeweller Michael Mizzi in Attard also went wrong, leaving one of Psaila's accomplices seriously injured in the legs.

Darren Debono, known as 'It-Topo', and Vincent Muscat are separately charged with both heists.

Fabio Psaila had been on the run for five weeks and turned himself in on Boxing Day 2010, after he needed medical attention from the numerous pellet wounds he sustained during the same shooting in Attard.

Fabio Psaila was indicted by Magistrate Audrey Demicoli.

In November 2003, Psaila was sentenced to 100 months' imprisonment by a Sicilian court in Catania on the trafficking of 4kgs of cocaine and a kilo of marijuana. On 17 September 2008, he was arraigned on assault of two police constables, for which he was released on a €2,000 bail.