The youngest daughter of a murdered lawyer scribbled in a copybook that her father was the “worst dad in the world” and that she “hated” him, a jury heard today.

Clutching a doll, the child appeared in a video testimony taken in January 2014, when she was aged nine – two years after her mother, Margaret Mifsud, was found strangled in her car in Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq after a night out with her colleagues on April 19, 2012.

The child’s father and Dr Mifsud’s former husband, Libyan Nizar El Gadi, stands accused of having committed the crime.

The accused Nizar El Gadi

The girl recalled that she had spoken to “Nizar” – as she consistently referred to her father – on Skype the same day her mother had left for Xemxija.

“He asked me where Mummy was going. I told him the name of the restaurant and the place.” Asked whether anything else was said after she told him of the location, the girl said the conversation ceased because the accused told her that he had to go to work.

She recalled that the last time she saw her mother, she (the girl) was in tears because she wanted to go to sleep beside her mother, as she was used to doing every night.

One of the last conversations with her mother centred on what her mother would wear for the evening and whether her hair would be tied up or left loose.

Before leaving, Dr Mifsud instructed her mother and two children to phone her on her friend Astrid Bonnici’s number because she would be switching off her mobile phone.

“I phoned her on Astrid’s number but there was no reply.”

On May 21, 2012, the girl and her older sister, who was then nine, created a copybook.

“I thought: ‘let me write down the things dad did maybe I could use it one day,” the older sister said in the 2014 video testimony.

The girl said she wrote unaided and that her grandmother had seen the copybook.

Under cross-examination, the younger daughter said that the family lawyer had suggested they write down their memories so as not to forget. She said that, like her sister, she had also showed the copybook to her grandmother, adding that she now referred to her as “mummy”.

He bought me a bicycle and it looked broken. I sat down on it and it broke. It looked like he got it from a dustbin. I was really mad. I told him you're the worst dad in the world. I hate you

She wrote about an incident when the accused grabbed the victim by her hand and locked them both in the grandmother’s bedroom. The girl said she could hear her mother shouting at him to leave her alone.

The two girls ran to their bedroom to fetch pillows in an attempt to try and break down the door and free their mother.

Like her sister, she also referred to the March 2012 incident where her father attempted to strangle her mother, adding that although she was not at home, her mother told her about the incident when she went to file a police report. She also saw a red mark on her neck.

In the first testimony she gave as a seven-year-old in 2012, the girl said she didn’t love her father.

Asked why, she replied that he never bought her anything or he failed to buy her the things she needed for school. She also said that whenever they started to play, the father would end up fighting or playing rough.

Later in the copybook, the girl wrote:

“He bought me a bicycle and it looked broken. I sat down on it and it broke. It looked like he got it from a dustbin. I was really mad. I told him you're the worst dad in the world. I hate you.”

Lawyer Martin Testaferrata Moroni Viani is defending the accused. Judge Antonio Mizzi is presiding over the case. Lawyers Kathleen Grima and Arthur Azzopardi are appearing parte civile on behalf of the family of the victim while Giannella Busuttil and Philip Galea Farrugia from the Attorney General’s Office are prosecuting.