A father who kidnapped his nine-year-old son from a Sliema school in 2004 has been let off with a slap on the wrist, with a magistrate seeming more heavy-handed in his comments on the way with which the police treated the case.

The 60-year-old man’s name cannot be published to protect the identity of the boy, who is now 20. He was found guilty of kidnapping his son from St Patrick's School, where he was placed following a care order.

He had also been charged with threatening, assaulting and slightly injuring two police officers and trying to seriously injure them when he drove a car in their direction on November 7, 2004.

Other charges included filing a false police report, driving dangerously, speeding, uttering obscene words when drunk, failing to look after himself while under the influence of alcohol, disobeying police and breaching the conditions of a previous release.

But Magistrate Giovanni Grixti ruled that the court was not convinced at all that the incident took place in way being described by the police, saying the picture they had tried to paint was “very, very dubious, for a variety of reasons”.

He said the only result of the alleged violent attack they suffered, which the police translated into 21 charges, was a small scratch on one of the officers.

The magistrate told off the prosecution for not summoning as witnesses for cross examination the alleged victims of this attack and therefore ordered the removal of their testimony from the acts of the case.

The man told the court he had decided to take his son from the school because he visited him every day and always found him crying so he took him home with him to join his three siblings who were in his custody.

The court heard how he cooperated with police and willingly took the boy to the police station.

In his judgment, Magistrate Grixti, who has been recently promoted to judge, said the prosecution had not brought any evidence to support certain charges such as driving dangerously, without a licence or insurance cover and driving under the influence.

“This is one of the reasons why the court doubts the prosecution’s version of events,” the magistrate said as he reproduced the testimony of one of the prosecuting officers:

“Your honour, all I wanted to say... what I can say is that XXXX cooperated with the police even though it took us between 11am and 8pm to convince him but he finally bowed his head and went to get the child and got him to the police station. This is what I’d like to say.”

Magistrate Grixti said that of all the 21 charges proffered against the defendant, the prosecution had only managed to prove three, two of which were related to the kidnap and one to the breach of conditions of a previous release.

The magistrate told the man that while he understood the emotions that could have led to the kidnap, his decision to take the child from somewhere when he knew that he was there under a care order was “a bad decision”, not only for him but also the child who suffered a greater trauma. For this, the court conditionally discharged the man for three years.

Inspectors Anthony Cassar, Claudine Vella and Raymond Aquilina prosecuted while lawyer Mark Busuttil appeared for the man.