A case involving two men who resisted arrest following a squabble with a neighbour was finally concluded after 16 years.
Magistrate Joseph Apap Bologna conditionally discharged Dominic Ebejer and Raymond Micallef for resisting arrest when the police turned up at a block of apartments in Maitland Street, Ħamrun, to investigate a disturbance in March 1997.
The court heard the two men argued with a neighbour, Joseph Azzopardi, over use of the common parts and over a bird cage on the roof.
Magistrate Apap Bologna cleared them of threatening the police but found them guilty of resisting their arrest and breaching the peace.
The six-page judgment did not go into why the case took so long to be decided.