An 18-year-old was yesterday acquitted, on lack of evidence, of hacking into his friend’s Hi5 social network profile and threatening his mother last March.

Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera noted that police officers from the cyber crime unit should have testified but were not notified.

As a result she cleared 18-year-old Edmond Attard from Mellieħa of the charge.

The mother, Maria Mariella Attard, had testified that the case took place a long time ago and it involved something obscene being written on her son’s Hi5 profile by a friend whom she did not know by name.

She said that she had spoken to a Police Inspector from the cyber crime unit but could not remember his name and added that it was only later that an officer from the Qawra police station had told her who the culprit was.

Her son Kurt was the next person to take the witness stand, saying he was in fact a friend of the accused but they had never spoken about the incident.

The accused teenager was promptly acquitted.

It later emerged that there were also mistakes in the charge sheet: the date of the alleged crime was incorrect – it actually happened in 2009 – the victim was not Mrs Attard but her son Kurt, and no threats had actually been made in what was written.