Four Italian youths were severely told off by a magistrate yesterday after admitting to stealing a laptop and other gadgets from a Buġibba guesthouse.

Enjoying the sand, sun and sea did not include stealing things, Magistrate Jacqueline Padovani told the students after conditionally discharging three of them for three years and the youngest, a 16-year-old boy, for two.

Using an interpreter, she said she could easily have thrown them into prison or even given them a suspended jail term which might have ruined their future.

Turning to the oldest of the four, a 22-year-old, she told him he should have set an example and prevented the crime from taking place.

Sidi Fuad El Otmani, 22, Gianmarco Ambra and Sara Griffone, both 18 and the 16-year-old, who cannot be named because he is a minor, admitted to stealing a laptop, three mobile phones, two iPods, a couple of digital cameras as well as cash from two rooms at a guest house they are staying at.

The victims of the thefts had seen them leaving one of the rooms and chased them down to a beach where some of the items were abandoned as the four ran away.

Police Inspector Paul Bond told the court they had cooperated fully during the investigations while lawyers Gianella Caruana Curran and Steve Tonna Lowell said that all the items had been returned.

The defence counsel requested that their clients be conditionally discharged because this was a one-off incident and the very fact that they had also spent time in a cell under arrest would serve as a deterrent.