[attach id=366907 size="medium"]Alfred Bugeja, Il-Porporina.[/attach]

Career criminal Alfred Bugeja, Il-Porporina, has halted his hunger strike which he started last Sunday.

Speaking from prison, Mr Bugeja said yesterday he had called a halt to the protest after reaching a gentleman’s agreement with the prison’s executive head Simon Buttigieg.

Mr Bugeja refused food after the prison authority suspended all his privileges, including contact visits with his wife, after he tested positive for drugs.

He has contested the claim and says a separate test carried out in hospital was negative. The authorities say the test was valid and insisted on the disciplinary measures accordingly.

Mr Bugeja protested mostly about the removal of his right to contact visits. Inmates are granted these special visits in which they are allowed to have face-to-face meetings with their spouses or relatives in privacy.

“I made the case with Mr Buttigieg that even if, for the sake of argument, I tested positive for drugs, my family should not suffer. I am respected by my wife of 22 years but I know people here whose relationship is hanging by a thread and something like this could be the death knell.

“I have been promised that when the (Acting Prison Director) Ray Zammit is back from abroad, this will be sorted out and I agreed to break the strike,” Mr Bugeja said.

Mr Buttigieg said he had simply agreed to put forward Mr Bugeja’s proposal, that he and other inmates should not have all forms of contact visits taken away when disciplined. They should retain at least one contact visit a month.

The rest of the disciplinary regime, even if this proposal is implemented for all prisoners, would remain in place for the next three months at least.

Earlier in the week, Mr Bugeja bought some €80 worth of groceries from the prison tuck shop. However, he insisted yesterday that he was not breaking his fast underhandedly. “You can ask anyone, I buy these groceries for my wife (who is also in prison) every week,” he said.

Mr Bugeja has a string of convictions.

In April 2010, he was jailed for seven years for stealing a car containing a shotgun.