A police sergeant charged with deleting part of a report connected to a shooting incident involving a minister's driver was likely to have been captured by CCTV cameras leaving the police station 20 minutes before the deletion occurred, a court heard this afternoon.
Three police officials who investigated Police Sergeant Leeroy Balzan confirmed that the uniformed police officer seen in CCTV footage leaving the Sliema police station at 1.24pm on November 22 resembled Mr Balzan.
They said that although his face could not be seen because the person was captured from behind, the stature of the person in the footage and in the still images exhibited in court as evidence was similar to that of Mr Balzan.
They were testifying in the compilation of evidence against Mr Balzan, a police sergeant stationed at the Sliema police station, who stands charged with deleting the first four paragraphs of the police report on the November 19 shooting incident involving Police Constable Paul Sheehan, the driver of former Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia.
Mr Balzan, 31, of Sliema, stands charged with crimes revolving around computer misuse. More specifically, he is accused of preventing the input of data, changing, deleting or adding official data, revealing a password to give access to official files to unauthorised people, committing crimes that were damaging to a government function, doing something to prejudice his superior and committing a crime he was in duty bound to prevent.
The crimes are alleged to have occurred on November 22 between 1pm and 2pm at the Sliema police station.
At the end of today's sitting, Mr Balzan was granted bail against a deposit of €2,000 and a €6,000 personal guarantee. He was also ordered to sign the Msida police station bail book once a week.
Superintendent Alexandra Mamo, Sergeant Major Alfred Abela and Police Constable Luke Busuttil all testified, under cross examination, that the stature of the person in the still images resembled that of Mr Balzan who was walking away from the station, in the direction of his house some metres down the road.
Before Magistrate Doreen Clarke, court expert Martin Bajada explained that Mr Balzan accessed the National Police System at 1.17.02pm and accessed the police report on the shooting incident at 1.17.20pm. He said he could not ascertain when the deletion took place but the report, with the first four paragraphs deleted, was updated at 1.49.53pm. He confirmed that the deletion took place when Mr Balzan was logged into the system.
He explained that since the police system had an automatic log out after 20 minutes of inactivity, someone must have been doing something on the system at the time.
Asked to express on opinion on whether the person in the still image resembled Mr Balzan, Dr Bajada said the image was too blurred to reach this conclusion. He, however, suggested that all the people who were working at the Sliema police station that day should be asked to pass from in front of the security camera. This would help investigators ascertain who it really was.
Police Inspector Sandro Camilleri said Mr Balzan persistently denied deleting parts of the report. He said his investigations had revealed that Mr Balzan had received a call from the police communications office to access to system to check whether it had been updated with a list of detainees.
Mr Balzan told investigators that he logged on and highlighted parts of the report to be able to read its better but vehemently denied deleting anything.
Dr Camilleri said he had also questioned another police officer, PC Luke Busuttil, who happened to be inside the police station at the time of the deletion. He said Constable Busuttil was with a man at the time, taking a report related to damage to a garage door.
Mr Busuttil testified that Mr Balzan was still inside the police station when he finished compiling this report. Although he insisted that it was after 1.30pm, he could not specifiy the time he finished taking this report.
The court heard, from several witnesses, including Superintendent Mamo, that it was "standard practice" that police officers gave their username and password to other police officers who did not have login details to access the system.
Dr Bajada, the IT expert, said that out of the 24 police officers stationed in the sixth police district, which includes Sliema, there were two officers who had no login details.
Superintendent Mamo said she knew that police officers exchanged their login details for "practicality's sake", adding that it was logistically impossible to work with officers who could not access the system.
The case continues at the end of December.
Lawyers Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri appeared for Mr Balzan.