Former police inspector David Gatt, now a lawyer, was laid bare in court yesterday as a criminal plotter who wanted to assassinate former President and Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami and styled himself as a Sicilian mafia boss.

PC Mario Portelli said he decided to spill the beans on his former friend and distant cousin when he started feeling involved in Dr Gatt’s criminal plans. He approached his superiors with a lengthy, hand-written, account of his six-year relationship with Dr Gatt, who had been dismissed from the police force in 2001 after investigators stumbled on a conversation between him and suspects in a hold-up.

In an hour-and-a-half-long testimony, PC Portelli repeated the gist of the account he gave to his bosses, saying he was speaking in spite of threats made by Dr Gatt on his life, that of his mother and son.

Dr Gatt, 40, of Birkirkara, is pleading not guilty to 14 charges including complicity in a string of major heists, harbouring criminals and involvement in organised crime.

In his explosive testimony, PC Portelli claimed Dr Gatt gave him details of three major hold-ups he had planned and a fourth in which he gave criminals advice on how to derail investigators in exchange for a “cheque of 10”, thought to be €10,000.

The constable also said Dr Gatt wanted Dr Fenech Adami dead. He had also planned attacks on the former and present police commissioners, the Attorney General and at least three police officers.

PC Portelli accused Dr Gatt of harbouring Fabio Psaila, wanted by the police in connection with a recent failed hold-up in Attard on a jeweller.

According to PC Portelli, Dr Gatt asked him to find medical help for Mr Psaila who sustained a gunshot wound during the failed hold-up.

But the constable also gave a portrait of a man obsessed with fantasies surrounding freemasonry, Cosa Nostra and the legend of the ruthless Sicilian mafia boss Toto Riina.

In the most stark of these portrayals, PC Portelli claimed the former Rabat inspector had performed on him an initiation rite which mirrored, down to minute detail, the secret induction ritual of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, which had been revealed by the mafioso-turned-informer after his capture in 1996.

PC Portelli said Dr Gatt even went about calling members of his alleged criminal gang by the names of Toto Riina’s most prominent clan members.