Police to be charged on Paceville beatings

One or more police officers are expected to be charged in the coming days in connection with the alleged beating of two handcuffed migrants in Paceville late in June.

An internal police investigation, launched following a report carried in The Times next day, has recommended that charges be pressed against at least one officer, police sources have told The Times.

Eyewitnesses had mentioned as many as five officers being involved in the beating of one of the migrants, Sudanese Suleiman Abubaker, and another three in that of the other, a 26-year-old Ivorian, Kaba Konate.

However, police sources say only one officer is likely to have been consistently identified by the main eyewitnesses.

The incidents, which occurred a few hours apart from each other, took place in Paceville's main square very late on a Friday night.

Both migrants had actually been given suspended sentences for assaulting the police in speedy court proceedings. But several eyewitnesses, spearheaded by Rebecca Filletti, who was arrested on the night of the incident after questioning the methods used by the police, said that they had not seen the immigrants behave violently. On the contrary, they had been beaten by the police for no reason, according to the eyewitnesses.

In the case of Mr Abubaker, the eyewitnesses arrived after the police but none of them saw him behave violently at any point. Ms Filletti said: "The man did not put up a fight. He merely lay on the ground crying and screaming for them to stop, saying he had done nothing wrong.

"He was in the foetal position, handcuffed and the police were kicking him and slammed him against their van," she had told The Times.

Mr Abubaker himself insisted, when interviewed a week after the incident, he was never violent and he only admitted to assaulting the officers in court because he wanted to get the ordeal over and done with.

Similarly, in the case of Mr Konate, the eyewitnesses said that he had resisted arrest but had not been violent in any way. Yet he was also found guilty of assaulting the three police officers after pleading guilty.

Two different eyewitnesses had said that they saw Mr Konate being manhandled and abused without reason by police officers.

Another eyewitness had said he saw a Maltese man and the migrant argue outside a club on St George's Road at about midnight. The dispute had not turned physical by then but seven policemen came running over the hill and went straight for the man, knocked him down, "lifted him up like a sack of potatoes and threw him into a police van with no questions asked" while allowing the Maltese man to leave, he said.

"Friday night was like a witch hunt. It was crazy. I was shocked," he had said of that night.

The internal investigation was launched immediately after this newspaper ran the story but the probe was stalled at one point by the recent bus strike, which drained all of the corps' resources.

During the interview Mr Abubaker had brushed aside any notion of retribution. When asked if he thought his two-year suspended sentence and the €300 fine he was given should be revoked, he insisted: "I want this thing to be closed."

mmicallef@timesofmalta.com