A well-known lawyer is expected to be charged in court in the coming weeks, accused of grievously injuring a man whom he allegedly assaulted in Ħamrun, biting his nose during the altercation.
Mario Mifsud, the lawyer of the Corradino Correctional Facility and its former director, Alex Dalli, has been summoned to appear in court to face charges that carry up to nine years in jail.
The incident took place on November 12 between midday and 1pm in St Joseph High Street when the 49-year-old Mosta lawyer clashed with his client and her partner in front of his legal office.
Details are still sketchy but according to the alleged victim’s version to the police, Mifsud confronted him while he and his partner were walking in Ħamrun.
He told the police Mifsud faced him and demanded to know if he “wanted to tell him anything”. The victim insists that he had not even spoken to the lawyer.
Police were told that the lawyer assaulted him and bit his nose in the process. During the scuffle, Mifsud allegedly kicked his victim in his private parts and also kicked his partner, who is his client in a civil case in which she is being represented by the lawyer.
As the fight ensued, he told his partner to call the police and managed to pin Mifsud to the ground until the police arrived.
The alleged victim told the police he knew Mifsud because he had worked for him in the past since he was a carpenter. He was the one who suggested Mifsud to his partner as a lawyer for her case. But he also told police that in the past, Mifsud had accused him of being so insistent on the case because he wanted a share of the money his partner was due in inheritance.
When contacted, Mifsud said he will be fighting the case as it was he who was assaulted by the alleged victims. He said he was pinned to a wall and a car and then pushed to the ground as his aggressors attempted to strangle him while repeating “I will kill you”.
He said he defended himself in the best way he could from the violent aggression that he suffered and expected the police to actually charge the complainants over the assault.
Mifsud will be charged in front of Magistrate Astrid May Grima with grievously injuring the man, slightly injuring his partner, threatening them and insulting them. The prosecution, led by Attorney General lawyers Andrea Zammit and Martina Calleja, and police inspector Sarah Kathleen Zerafa, have asked the court to provide for the safety of the alleged victims as well as issue a treatment order for Mifsud.
"According to law, together with or separately from a protection order, the court may issue a treatment order requiring a person to submit to treatment subject to the conditions which the court may deem appropriate"
According to law, together with or separately from a protection order, the court may issue a treatment order requiring a person to submit to treatment subject to the conditions which the court may deem appropriate.
Mifsud will also be charged with relapsing since there are other cases recorded on his conviction sheet. Details of these cases were not mentioned in the official documents.
Sources said Mifsud had already been arraigned twice over separate incidents in the past but the victims withdrew their complaints.
In January 2019, he was arraigned after a woman claimed that Mifsud, her estranged husband’s lawyer, threatened her and intimidated her in the court corridors the previous month. She told police he had been intimidating her for the previous three years.
He was originally arraigned before his brother, Magistrate Joe Mifsud, who for obvious reasons abstained from hearing the case. When he appeared before Magistrate Ian Farrugia in February, he made a declaration that he would not harass the woman again and she, in turn, was dropping the criminal complaint as well as the complaint she had filed against him before the Commission for the Administration of Justice.
Mifsud was back in the dock in November when he was accused of threatening a prison correctional officer who stopped him from taking photos with his client who was facing a trial by jury and who was under arrest. On that occasion too, the correctional officer withdrew the complaint and the court declared it as case closed.