Migrant says he was pepper-sprayed three times while handcuffed

One of the two migrants whose alleged beating by the police is at the centre of an inquiry says the officers who arrested him had pepper-sprayed him in the eyes three times while he was in handcuffs on the night of the incident and at one point he even had his feet bound in cuffs.

In a lengthy interview with The Times, Mr Abubaker says he fears the police but is expecting no payback. He just wants "the issue to be over".

Several eyewitnesses had told The Times that they saw the man, Suleiman Abubaker from Sudan, and another immigrant, Kaba Konate, from the Ivory Coast, being brutally beaten by the police while they were in handcuffs.

Following the story an inquiry, which is still ongoing, was launched into the case.

The alleged beatings took place between midnight and 3.30 a.m. on June 28.

Both of the migrants were charged a day later with assaulting the police and both pleaded guilty to the charges and were given suspended sentences.

Now Mr Abubaker is insisting that he never assaulted anyone, adding he was not aware that he was submitting a guilty plea.

"How could I have beaten the police? I had my hands and even my feat tied at one point," Mr Abubaker insisted. "I don't know (what happened exactly in court) really. This was the first time for me in court. I've never been in court, not even back in my country. I just wanted this thing over and done with," he said in fluent Maltese, when asked why he had filed a guilty plea even if he insists that he had not assaulted anyone.

"I just want peace. I don't want trouble... I want this thing to be closed," he kept repeating.

The whole incident, he explains, started when he was refused entry to a club by a bouncer. As he left the place a man, who he said was a Libyan national and who was outside the club, started insulting him and taunting him. "How can you expect them to let you in when they don't let me in," the man told him.

He moved on but was pulled by the shirt and punched in the face. He tried to defend himself and was cut in the finger by a bottle which the Libyan was hitting him with.

"At that point the police arrived. They ignored the Libyan man and told me to go away. I tried to explain that he attacked me and I told them to arrest him but instead they arrested me," he said.

He resisted the arrest and kept telling them that he did not want any trouble, at which point he was knocked on the floor, handcuffed and beaten by the officers, he said. "They even banged my head against the floor".

He was chucked into a police van. When inside, he started complaining about the handcuffs hurting his wrists - which still bear the marks. "I was banging on the van to tell them that the handcuffs were hurting me. Suddenly, a policeman opened the door, threw me on the floor, put cuffs on my feet, pepper-sprayed my eyes and threw me back in. I was shouting at this stage."

He had already been pepper-sprayed while being apprehended and was sprayed again later in the police station, he said.

Just after he was thrown back into the van, one of the eyewitnesses who spoke to The Times, Rebecca Filletti, intervened and inquired how she could help him. "She said she would help me and stayed with me even at the police station," he said.

"I was in great pain at this stage, especially my hands and my eyes and I asked to go to the polyclinic but instead they took me to the police station and handcuffed me to a bench there."

A this point, Ms Filletti and her friends started protesting about how Mr Abubaker was being treated and the police removed the handcuffs. "When this English girl (Ms Filletti) and her friends left, another policeman came and again tied me to the bench."

The day after he was taken to the hospital and treated, before being interrogated by a police inspector who asked him whether he had been beaten by his colleagues. "I told him no, I was not beaten because I didn't want any more trouble. I wanted this thing to be over. I just wanted to go back home. He said to me: You damaged our van. I said, OK, I will pay for it as long as I go home," he said when asked why he did not speak out.

But he was later taken to the police depot in Floriana and charged the following day for damaging a police vehicle and assaulting three police officers, the same three whom Mr Konate, the man from Ivory Coast, also admitted to have assaulted.

What went on in court still appears to be unclear to him. "I never said that I beat the officers," he insisted when asked why he pleaded guilty before adding: "I just told the lawyer I don't want to be under arrest, please help me".

"Then we went inside (the courtroom) and a paper was read and they said that I got a two-year jail term, that I needed to pay €300 in six months and that I could go home straight away."

Now he insists on closing the case, brushing aside any form of retribution. When asked if he thinks his two-year suspended sentence and the €300 fine he was given should be revoked if the police investigation confirms his version of events, his answer was: "I want this thing to be closed".

In fact, he will not even take a stand on what should happen to his alleged aggressors if his allegations are found to be well-founded. "I have been here since 2005 and I never caused trouble. I never look for trouble," he kept insisting. "I'm scared of the police."

He is convinced he got the treatment he did because he is black but refuses to generalise that the police force or the Maltese people are racist.

"I get a lot of comments on the street... people swearing at me because I'm black but I just walk away in these cases; this is their country. I just say: Thank you, my friend, and leave. This is their country, how can I fight with them?

"I have a lot of Maltese friends who are nice to me but then there are other people who hate me because of my skin."

Mr Abubaker arrived in Malta in 2005, after fleeing Darfur in 1996, and was given humanitarian status. "The rebels were burning villages, killing people and we were told that the day after they would come to our village, so we escaped."

He was 15 at the time. His father and two sisters (his mother died giving birth to a third child) remained in Chad but he moved on hoping to find a better life. He arrived in Libya in 2002, but life there was unbearable, in his own words.

"We then took the boat to Italy... I paid $1,200. We ran out of fuel. We were very scared but then the soldiers came."