Two 39-year-old twin brothers have been charged with threatening their elderly parents after going on a rampage when they were denied money to buy drugs.
The men appeared in court on Monday where one was also accused of using a firearm to try to extract money from their parents. The pair denied the charges and were remanded in custody.
Inspector Christian Cauchi told the court how on March 17, the parents had visited the Domestic Violence Unit to report how their two sons would constantly demand money to sustain their drug habits and would wreck the house if their demands were not met.
The court also heard how the unemployed twins’ father had told police he had spent “over a million euros” on his sons’ drug habit over the years.
He said how on one occasion, the father had been cleaning his firearms when one of the sons grabbed the weapon and after the father refused to give him money to buy drugs, he threatened to kill him.
The twin brothers were accused of using violence, including moral violence to compel their elderly parents to give them money, and one brother was also charged with having done so by using a firearm.
He was also accused of violently resisting and threatening a police officer, who he also slightly injured. He was further charged with having committed an offence during a suspended sentence.
The court also charged the twins with having knowingly caused their elderly parents to endure mental suffering and causing them to fear violence, along with destroying furniture at their parents’ home and threatening them.
Both twins were charged with breaching a treatment order they had been placed under in other proceedings.
Assisting the defendants, lawyer Yanika Barbara Sant, asked the inspector when the father had reported the gun incident, to which the inspector replied “yesterday”, clarifying that the actual incident had happened three months ago.
Barbara Sant requested bail but the prosecution objected to the men being released at this stage, citing the risk of them suborning witnesses as they visited their parents every day.
Both defendants also had a criminal record.
Barbara Sant disagreed with the inspector’s assessment of the defendants to be untrustworthy, arguing that they had never been convicted of breaching bail.
She was skeptical about the alleged incident involving the father’s firearm, arguing that if it had truly caused the parents to fear for their lives, the report would have been made earlier, on the day of the actual incident, and not three months later.
Court denied bail, but because of the nature of the charges, and the fact the alleged victims were yet to testify in these proceedings, the court had no peace of mind that evidence would not be tampered with.