A 52-year-old Bulgarian man was arrested as he was about to board an airplane after he was overheard saying: “No one is going to survive”.
Ivan Zlatev Manolov was arraigned before Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech this afternoon, charged with threatening people as well as with threatening two police officers.
The accused, who described himself as an artist, was told off by the court because his identity card – which had expired in 2014 – displayed his old address in Malta.
Prosecuting officer Silvio Magro told the court that the accused’s landlady – who owned both his former and current residence - had thrown him out because he had damaged the furniture.
She had also paid his flight ticket for him to return to Bulgaria.
“You do know how to get a free ride don’t you?” the magistrate noted sardonically.
As he was boarding the van yesterday morning which would shuttle him to the aircraft, he was overheard by a Maltese couple saying that: “No one is going to survive”.
He also threatened the police who interrogated him, saying that he would be surviving the ordeal of being arrested but they wouldn’t.
Asked by the court whether he was drunk, Insp. Magro said that the accused said he wasn’t.
Lawyer Yanika Bugeja argued that he was, with Insp. Magro countering that he could not smell any alcohol on the accused’s person and that he was nor acting in an intoxicated manner.
Dr Bugeja entered a request for bail, which was turned down in view of the seriousness of the offence and a lack of a fixed address and community ties as well as the fact that the defendant had not proven that he had sufficient means to maintain himself.
“The court does not take kindly to people who instil fear in others,” Magistrate Frendo Dimech said.
“It is reprehensible and could have caused much more serious consequences.”
The accused said that it was not true that he had said those words. In response, the court noted that in the statement he had given to the police, he had admitted it was a “joke”.
The accused was remanded in custody.