A man who was found guilty of sending threatening texts on Tuesday also got a telling off from a magistrate after he burst into a courtroom and started shouting.
Zeiad Mohamed Abuzoda, 40, Tripoli-born, living at St Paul’s Bay had previously been charged over a number of threatening messages he allegedly sent.
One of the alleged victims, an English-speaking Arab national working as a legal translator in Malta for the past 25 years, took the witness stand saying that matters had turned sour between the two when the accused began to send him insulting and threatening messages in Arabic on his phone.
“I had assisted him in many cases but then he began to send me messages, insulting my mother and even threatening to kill me.”
The threats had persisted right up to today, when the accused had allegedly passed some disparaging remarks upon catching a glimpse of the complainants in the courtroom.
Another man testified as to how he had received a call from the accused in jail asking him for €50. The man had obliged. However, the request was repeated over and over, becoming quite a habit.
Eventually, the requests for money were replaced by threatening messages and a call from prison.
As the court, presided over by magistrate Charmaine Galea, heard the witnesses, the man at the dock shifted restlessly, uttering the occasional loud remark and even making the ‘time-out’ gesture to grab the attention of his lawyer, who constantly motioned the accused to keep silent and let him “get on with his work.”
After hearing the two witnesses, lawyer Mario Mifsud argued that although his client did have “a colourful character” the Court was to base its decision on the evidence put forward.
One of the complaints centred upon a call allegedly made from the Corradino Correctional Facility, where the accused is currently in custody, and no material evidence of that call had been put forward, the lawyer argued.
The best evidence was missing, Dr Mifsud insisted.
Upon the evidence put forward the court, presided over by magistrate Charmaine Galea, on Tuesday declared the accused guilty in both cases, fining him €200 in each case and also issuing a 5-year protection order in favour of both victims.