A man is back in custody just three weeks after he was released, after he allegedly made threatening phone calls to a prosecuting inspector.

Frankie Falzon, 40, from Qormi, was arrested and marched to Court on Friday after investigators managed to track him down as the suspect caller behind three menacing phone calls to an officer from the Vice Squad.

Last Wednesday, that suspect allegedly called the police headquarters, getting through to the inspector prosecuting a case in which he is involved. The next sitting had been scheduled for Friday morning.

Identifying himself as ‘Frankie Falzon’, the caller dialed three times over the span of some 30 minutes, alleging that the inspector was “corrupt” and menacingly telling him that there were “prison inmates ready to get at him.”.

The police went to the caller’s residence and although he admitted to having made the call, he insisted that he did not mean them.

The man was arrested and arraigned for having threatened the officer, caused him to fear violence, improper use of electronic equipment and swearing in public. He was further charged with having committed said offences during the operative period of a suspended sentence, with breaching the conditions of bail and also with being a recidivist.

The man pleaded not guilty and made a request for bail which was objected to by the prosecution not only in view of the serious nature of the charges, but also in view of the fact that the man had disobeyed earlier court orders and breached the conditions of bail.

More troubling was the fact that the man had allegedly “checked upon the inspector while in jail,” prosecuting Inspector Lydon Zammit continued.

After hearing submissions by defence lawyer Ishmael Psaila, the court, presided over by magistrate Josette Demicoli, turned down the request for bail, upholding the prosecution’s arguments and adding further that the man failed to satisfy the necessary guarantees required by law.