Jail sentence confirmed for hairstylist's murderer

The Court of Criminal Appeal has confirmed a 25-year jail term handed down on a Libyan man for the murder of hairstylist Alfie Rizzo in his Gzira salon six years ago.

Aimen Said Giali El Baden, 24, had been sent to jail after jurors unanimously found him guilty of stabbing Rizzo to death in February, 1998.

But El Baden appealed the judgment on three grounds. He claimed that the judge who presided over his trial had misdirected jurors and that jurors could not have found him guilty of murder. He also claimed that the punishment handed down was too severe.

Chief Justice Vincent DeGaetano, Mr Justice Joseph Filletti and Mr Justice David Scicluna, who presided over the Appeals Court, combed through the evidence and court documents and ruled that the judge's address had not misled jurors and that jurors had reasonably reach their verdict.

The court also ruled that the punishment handed down by the first court was within the parameters of the law, which laid down that the maximum jail term for murder is life imprisonment but the term is reduced by a grade or two if the person is under 18.

Once life imprisonment was reduced by a grade, since El Baden was 17 at the time of the commission of the crime, he faced a jail term ranging between seven years and a month and 30 years and nine months.

On handing down judgment the presiding judge had noted that El Baden was a minor at the time of the commission of the crime and had a clean criminal record.

The judge had also noted the serious nature of the crime and that the verdict was a unanimous one. For this reason, the Appeals Court ruled that the punishment handed down was appropriate.