A Libyan man who was caught red handed after he broke into an apartment in St Julian's last year has been jailed for 16 months.

Fisel Mofth Abusina, 32, was found guilty of stealing a Samsung mobile phone and €900 in cash from the apartment in Dragonara Road on August 22 last year. 

The tenant, Negoi Valentin told Magistrate Doreen Clarke how he returned to his apartment and immediately realised that someone had broken in as everything was on the floor. He saw that the mobile and the cash he kept at home were missing. 

He and his roommates went downstairs to ask a security guard whether he had seen anything and on their return found that the accused had returned to the apartment. They performed a citizen's arrest and waited for the police to arrive. He was then taken into custody. 

The accused admitted that he went to the apartment block twice but denied any theft.

He said he was drinking with his friends at a nearby pub and went to his friend's apartment on the second floor to use the bathroom. 

But Magistrate Clarke found this version to be not credible, especially when comparing what he had told police during his interrogation and what he said in court during his testimony. Moreover, there was no explanation on why he had gone to the third floor - where the robbed apartment was - if his friend's apartment was on the second floor. 

In addition, the court said, the accused and his friend appeared in CCTV footage trying to force open a door of an apartment on the third floor. 

The court therefore found him guilty of the charges and condemned him to 16 months in jail and ordered him to pay €956 in court expenses. Moreover, the magistrate restarted a three-year suspended jail term handed down in June last year rather than turning it into an effective jail term.