A 52-year-old woman who filed a false police report claiming her husband was harbouring a fugitive on his yacht was yesterday conditionally discharged for a year.
Mary Cassar's claim prompted about 12 officers, including soldiers armed with submachine guns, to raid the yacht while it was anchored in Mellieħa Bay in September 2008.
Her husband, Edward Cassar, had then filed a judicial protest claiming his rights had been violated when his yacht was raided without a warrant, causing him "undue shock and humiliation".
The couple are going through contentious separation proceedings, in which the yacht has been a sticking point and the subject of several police reports. It is the same boat that was vandalised with shocking-pink spray paint while berthed at the Msida marina last August.
Seeing that Mrs Cassar had a clean police record, Magistrate Doreen Clarke conditionally discharged her for one year after finding her guilty of filing the false report.
Mrs Cassar had told a police inspector that her husband was hanging around with a man known as Il-Pele. She was then informed that a person known as Il-Pele had escaped police custody and was, therefore, a wanted man. But while the escapee's real name was Joseph Cini, the man who was friendly with her husband was Frank Bonett, known as Frankie ta' Londra, Il-Pele, also known to the police but not wanted.
When she made her report to the police and helped them in their investigation to identify the yacht, she said she only knew the man Frankie ta' Londra by his nickname Il-Pele.
In court, it emerged that she had actually known about him since July of that year when someone had told her who he was and she, therefore, knew that Il-Pele the fugitive was not the same person as the one on the boat with her husband.
Before the raid, she asked police officers to refer to him as simply Il-Pele and she refrained from showing them photos that she said she had taken of him.
It also emerged that, after the raid, the first thing Mrs Cassar did was ask the police how her husband had reacted.