A Qormi barber was stabbed with scissors in his shop during a fight between clients, leading to the arraignment of four men.
The stabbing took place at around 3pm on April 9 in Triq il-Vittorja.
Syrian nationals Alaa Mohamed, 29, Mohamad Mohamad, 32, Abd Alkarim Zidan, 28, and Bashar Mohamad, 29, all residing in Qormi, appeared before Magistrate Nadia Vella on Wednesday.
They all pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them.
Inspector Wayne Bonello and lawyer Nicole Marie Sladden from the Office of the Attorney General told the court that two of the men went to the Qormi police station holding bloodstained scissors. They claimed they were attacked, sparking a police investigation.
Alaa Mohamed and Mohamad Mohamad were charged with grievously injuring the barber with a sharp and pointed instrument.
Zidan and Bashar Mohamad were charged with being accomplices in the crime. Zidan alone was further charged with holding the barber against his will while all four were charged with causing the victim to fear violence.
Bashar Mohamad was also charged with committing a crime while out on bail over a separate case.
Defence lawyers representing each of the accused requested bail but the prosecution objected since there were civilian witnesses who still had to testify in the proceedings.
Magistrate Vella turned down the request but urged the prosecution to summon the witnesses at the first available opportunity.
Lawyers Franco Debono, Marion Camilleri, Noel Bianco, Martina Herrera, Roberta Bonello, and Adreana Zammit were defence counsel.
Human smuggling
Bashar Mohamad is facing separate criminal proceedings over human smuggling.
He was originally arrested over his potential involvement in terrorism, which the police found was not the case.
He was, however, charged with human smuggling after he was allegedly caught in possession of two Maltese passports which he was planning to use when flying out of Malta to Germany. Only one of them was his and the other belonged to a relative.
Investigators believe he was planning to sell the second passport to someone else while abroad so that it could be used for somebody to enter Malta illegally.