Police officer cleared of beating man in Paceville

A police officer was yesterday acquitted of charges brought against him in connection with the alleged beating of an Ivorian in Paceville last July.

PS Aaron Bugeja, 27, was charged with slightly injuring Kaba Konate and committing a crime he was in duty bound to prevent.

The story started in the early hours of a Saturday in Paceville square when eyewitnesses claimed that two migrants had been brutally beaten by police officers.

Mr Konate and another migrant, Sudanese Suleiman Abubaker, pleaded guilty to assaulting three police officers.

A nightclub bouncer, John Rivas, testified that when Mr Konate entered the club where he worked, he was asked for identification and the migrant refused to produce any. The migrant became aggressive and so he decided to stop him from entering the club.

"Mr Konate started shouting obscenities at me and said that I did not let him into the club because of the colour of his skin," Mr Rivas said.

Two policemen who were walking down the road noticed the commotion. "After they took Mr Konate across the road he continued swearing at me and saying offensive things about Malta."

At that point, Mr Rivas said, a crowd gathered around Mr Konate and when the police officers tried to handcuff him while he lay on the ground, the crowd started kicking him.

A foreign student, Saraz Phatti, testified that he had seen the policemen kick and hit Mr Konate repeatedly as he lay on the ground. He added that he had not heard Mr Konate say anything.

Mr Phatti said he had been with two friends at the time of the incident but he promised them that he would not mention their names in court. When pressed by the defence lawyer to name his friends, Mr Phatti replied that his friends were abroad now in any case.

Another witness, Conrad Bonnici, who had been in the area said he came forward to give his version of events after disagreeing with newspaper reports about the incident. His version of what happened was similar to that of Mr Rivas.

In handing down judgment, Magistrate Silvio Meli cleared PS Bugeja of all the charges brought against him. The court said that after taking into consideration the conflicting evidence of the police officers involved and that of the witnesses it could not find the police officer guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

The magistrate said the injuries sustained by Mr Konate had not been inflicted by the police officers but apparently by the crowd who had gathered around him annoyed by the fact that he was insulting the Maltese people. Indeed, the police were trying to protect Mr Konate from the crowd that had gathered around him.

Lawyers Joe Giglio and Arthur Azzopardi appeared for the accused.