A former footballer who was jailed in Tunisia on drug charges, testified in court on Thursday against the man who allegedly hatched a plan to ship 50kg of cannabis to Malta.

Gaetano Farrugia, who used to play for Msida St Joseph, languished in a Tunisian jail for three years before being pardoned along with some 300 other prisoners by Tunisian caretaker President Moncef Marzouki on the second anniversary of his country’s revolution, which was the beginning of the so-called Arab Spring.

Farrugia took the witness stand at the trial by jury of 52-year old Egyptian Ahmed El Fadali Enan, who stands accused of conspiring to import the cannabis resin from Tunisia in 2010.

Farrugia said that back then, his detergent shop had run into financial troubles and so when the Egyptian, a stranger at the time, offered to pay him some €15,000 for helping ship a drug consignment to Malta, he willingly took up the offer.

The two men first met at the Fgura boċċi club.

After that initial meeting, Farrugia said he only met El Fadali a couple of times or so.  

El Fadali instructed him to head out to Tunis on a Sunday, get hold of the first 50 kilo lot of cannabis on Monday, then a second equal lot on Tuesday before transferring the total stash to a fishing vessel that was to call for the bags at the beach close to the seaside hotel he was staying at.

Farrugia did as instructed.  He met a Tunisian man who was waiting outside the hotel and who accompanied him on an hour-and a half drive to another town where two men dumped two bags inside the trunk of their car. 

On the drive back, the other man had suddenly pulled the car to the side of the road and left, telling Farrugia to “drive on straight ahead.”

Back at the hotel, he tried calling Ahmed but there was no reply and when the Egyptian finally took his call, Farrugia warned him that he would only wait a few days and unless someone called for the drugs, he would fly back home and leave the bags behind.

The next stage of the plan was for Farrugia to go down to the shore and use a torch to signal the boat that was to take the drugs.

But on the day, a number of police officers swarmed into his hotel room and after finding the drug-filled bags, handcuffed him, pushed him onto the bed and gave him a “good beating,” recalled Farrugia as he answered questions by prosecuting lawyer Kevin Valletta.

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace, Farrugia  said that although he had never been to Tunisia before and did not speak the  language, he had agreed to the deal because he needed the money to cover some €12,000 in debts.

“So you struck a deal with someone you only met a couple of times, met a driver you didn’t know, flashed your torch at persons you didn’t know….What if some other fishermen flashed their torch back?”asked the defence lawyer, seeking to poke holes in the witness’s testimony.

“The first one to flash the torch would have got the drugs,” said Farrugia.

“Are you sure it was Ahmed who called you when in Tunis?” pressed on Micallef Stafrace.

“Yes,” said the witness, identifying the accused seated at the dock.

“A man you only met twice? Did you recognize his voice?” went on the lawyer.

Earlier in Thursday's sitting, Farrugia’s brother Adrian testified about a call he had received from Gaetano who told him he had “run into trouble” in Tunis but said nothing about the drugs at the time.

He had been directed to seek out “Ahmed” at the Fgura pitch.

But when Adrian went there as directed, the stranger who identified himself as “Ahmed” refused to help his brother, simply repeating “I don’t want to talk to him.”

His brother next directed him to another man named “Leli” who allegedly spoke to the Tunis police in Arabic and then re-directed Adrian to Ahmed.

When Adrian returned to Ahmed a second time, pestering him to help his brother, the man slammed his phone on the ground and stepped on it, the witness said, adding that the accused had told him “tell me if he’s caught so that I no longer send money abroad.”

That was when he headed to police headquarters to report that his brother was in trouble.

Asked whether he identified the accused, the witness said: “He’s alone [in the dock] but if he were with others I wouldn’t be able to recognize him.”

Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera is presiding over the trial.

AG lawyers Kevin Valletta and Godwin Cini are prosecuting.

Lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace is defence counsel.