Robbers took almost €20,000 and phone top-up cards. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

Two accused men were cleared of staging an armed robbery after it emerged that a third man had falsely accused them of being his accomplices.

It resulted in court that Keith Galea, who was jailed for three years after benefiting from a reduction in his sentence for helping with the police investigation, had had a tiff with one of the two men for having dated his girlfriend.

Aaron Cassar, 35, and Joseph Grech, 52, were charged with participating in a hold-up at an exchange bureau in St Julian’s on August 8, 2010. They were arraigned after Mr Galea, who was also charged over the same armed robbery, testified that Mr Cassar and Mr Grech were his accomplices. He also claimed they had masterminded it.

However, Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera found his testimony to be inconsistent and vague, as he claimed he could not remember basic information such as what the robbers were wearing. Though he said one of his accomplices was wearing a red T-shirt, the exchange bureau employee who the robbers had held at gunpoint and bound with cable ties said the assailants were wearing dark clothes.

Josef Aquilina said the armed robbery took place as he was opening the outlet for business and three masked men barged in, held him at gunpoint and ordered him not to move. The robbers made off with almost €20,000 in cash apart from thousands of euros worth of mobile top-up cards, One4All gift vouchers and many travellers’ cheques.

Mr Galea had been arrested two days after the robbery. At first he denied his involvement but later said he was the person who held the employee at gunpoint while the other two took the cash.

Two years later, he told Magistrate Carol Peralta the masterminds were Mr Cassar and Mr Grech. Asked why he had not mentioned them before, he said he did not have the opportunity to talk about the case before.

He told the court that shortly after he was released from prison over another case, Mr Grech, whom he knew from prison, approached him, telling him he had a “job” for him that would yield some €100,000.

He claimed he later met Mr Grech, Mr Cassar, and another man, whom he did not know, to discuss the hold-up, before proceeding to change the registration plates on a stolen vehicle.

It later emerged that Mr Galea and Mr Cassar had argued about a woman, whom they had both dated.

Mr Cassar and Mr Grech both insisted that they had not been involved in the armed robbery.

In her judgment, Magistrate Scerri Herrera ruled that the prosecution had failed to bring enough evidence to link the two men to the robbery. Moreover, there was no scientific evidence, such as fingerprints or gunshot residue, to back the charges.

She held that Mr Galea’s testimony was not convincing and did not corroborate the version of the hold-up victim, even on basics such as the number of shots that had been fired.

She therefore cleared the two men of the charges brought against them.

Lawyers Edwards Gatt and David Gatt appeared for the men.