A young man bearing an Australian passport was found not guilty of seriously injuring a Maltese teenager during a fight that broke out at the Havana Club in Paceville in March 2015.

Wail Rizgalla was accused of having allegedly hit Andrea Degiorgio in the face with a hard object, believed to have been a glass.

The incident took place shortly before midnight when both the accused and the victim were enjoying a night out at the club, the court heard.

Following an aggression upon a friend of his, the victim accompanied his friend to the toilets. It was at that moment that a group of youngsters entered the premises and allegedly sparked off the brawl.

The victim had testified that in the ensuing confusion he caught sight of a dark-complexioned man, later identified as Mr Rizgalla, who raised his hand as though about to strike.

Mr Degiorgio admitted in court that he ducked suddenly so as to avoid being hit and felt something hard brush across his face and mouth. Seeing scattered fragments of broken glass on the floor, he assumed that he was hit by a glass object.

Several eyewitnesses had testified that although they had seen the accused at the site of the incident, they could not identify him as the aggressor. One of the witnesses had identified the accused as a mere onlooker on the night of the alleged aggression. Other witnesses had failed outright to identify the accused in court.

This conflicting evidence did not sufficiently prove the guilt of the accused beyond all reasonable doubt, the court concluded.

While acquitting the accused of the charges, magistrate Aaron Bugeja, presiding over the case, observed that "certain places of entertainment have been transformed into a battlefield where young (and even not so young ) people who supposedly go there to have fun end up involved in often barbaric fights..."

The court remarked that the victim would "carry the scar and the consequence of this aggression all his life."

However, in such cases, the family of the victim would also bear the suffering caused by such a terrible experience.