David Gatt styled himself after Corleonese mafia, plotted hold-ups from his parents' house - main witness

Karl Stagno-Navarra is reporting from the law courts.

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13:12 David Gatt's request for bail postponed for Tuesday.

12:58 Lawyers ask for bail: "accused has clean record and all main witnesses heard".

12:54 Pause for some mirth in courtroom as experts are appointed to transcribe PC 99 mobile phone conversations: Dr Zammit Montebello asked by prosecution to confirm his nickname is 'Goofy' - childhood moniker from when Zammit Montebello played the cartoon character in school play.

12:38 Doctor who saw to injuries of Debono and other HSBC suspect Vince Muscat was asked by David Gatt to keep it "confidential" so as not to alert police attention. John Zammit Montebello then learnt Gatt was their lawyer during hearing in court, to request bail for the two HSBC heist suspects.

12:27 Darren Debono, known as 'it-Topo', was injured in HSBC Qormi heist after police shooting, and David Gatt called Balzan mayor Dr John Zammit Montebello to assist his 'friend'. Zammit Montebello referred Debono for X-ray but the next day, when he was seeing him, police entered clinic to effect arrest.

12:10 David Gatt's defence team is made up of Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo, and also Joe Giglio. Balzan mayor Dr John Zammit Montebello should be next to take witness stand.

11:59 Main witness Mario Portelli PC 99 concluding testimony after claiming he was threatened by Gatt into providing him with identikits of criminal suspects for HSBC Qormi heist.

11:30 David Gatt cashed in Lm10,000 for help in planning Balzan hold-up of HSBC bank.

11:14 David Gatt's main base was his parents' home, where he lived and planned the Attard jewellers' hold-up, apparently as revenge on the jeweller who never rewarded the Rabat police (where Gatt had been stationed as a police inspector prior to 2001) for finding him a lost money bag.

11:02 Main witness Mario Portelli says fugitive Fabio Psaila was David Gatt's 'general' and that Gatt styled himself as 'Zio Toto' [Unce Toto] after Salvatore (Toto) Riina, the Mafia boss captured back in 1993. Gatt also called Fabia Psaila his 'Leoluca Bagarella' after the notorious Corleone clan underboss, and Romeo Bone, another criminal suspect, his 'Scarpuzedda' after mafia boss Pino Greco.

10:48 Mario Portelli says it was Fabio Psaila - still on the run and a suspect in the Goldmark Jewellers hold-up - who said Gatt was planning an 'imminent attack' on former President and PM Eddie Fenech Adami: "When Fenech Adami retired, Gatt said 'lil dan wasal zmien li nnizzillu x-shutter [it's time I pull the shutter down on this guy]."

10:43 PC 99 Mario Portelli says David Gatt performed a mafia initiation rite on him, spoke in Italian and warned him: "betrayal will cost you."

10:39 PC 99 Mario Portelli - main witness - reveals he is also second cousin to David Gatt. "I know more about him than he stands to be charged with."

10:36 PC 99 Mario Portelli takes the stand

10:10 In the first of witnesses to take the stand in the David Gatt case, Assistant Commissioner Joe Cachia reported the information given by a prime witness - PC 99 Mario Portelli - who befriended Gatt and was privy to conversations with the alleged crime boss.

Described by prosecutors as the 'boss of bosses', former police inspector David Gatt has been charged with association to organised crime and complicity in a string of armed hold-ups, including the theft of one million euros from the Balzan HSBC bank branch in 2007. The former police inspector is pleading not gulity to with complicity in armed hold-ups, including the €1 million heist on the HSBC Bank branch in Balzan in 2007, and last June’s attempted hold-up on the HSBC Bank’s vault at the bank’s headquarters in Qormi.

According to PC 99 Mario Portelli’s information, Gatt had expressed frustration after the failed heist on HSBC’s main headquarters in Qormi back in June.

Portelli was said to have been given a holy picture by Gatt, and performed a similar initiation rite as to the Sicilian mafia’s, by burning it and then drawing blood from Portelli’s finger.

Cachia also said that after the heist, in which Darren Debono – one of the main suspects – was injured by police fire, Gatt had approached doctor and Balzan mayor John Zammit Montebello to treat Debono but not to report the matter to police. Cachia said Gatt is recorded on CCTV footage approaching Dr Zammit Montebello in a bar in Balzan.

Gatt also told PC 99 that it had taken him five months to plan the HSBC heist. He would later express frustration that the hold-up on the Goldmark jewellers' shop in Attard had failed. According to Gatt, the motive for the hold-up was that when he had been stationed at the Rabat police station, jeweller Michael Mizzi had lost his money bag and no reward was ever given to police for finding his bag.

Assistant Commissioner Joe Cachia also told the court that Gatt had plans for attempts on the life of President emeritus Eddie Fenech Adami, former police commissioner George Grech and Commissioner of Police John Rizzo, and also the Attorney General. "He was planning an attack on the State," Cachia said.