A love triangle led to two men being falsely accused of an armed robbery on a foreign exchange bureau in 2010.
Aaron Cassar, 35, and Joseph Grech, 52 were cleared of participating in a hold-up at an Exchange Bureau in St Julian’s on August 8, 2010.
Keith Galea, who had been jailed for three years after having benefitted from a reduction in his sentence for helping the police with their investigations, had had a tiff with Mr Cassar for having dated his girlfriend.
Mr Galea, who was also charged over the same armed robbery, admitted to the charges and told the police, during a testimony under oath before a different magistrate, that Mr Cassar and Mr Grech were his accomplices. He also claimed that they were the masterminds of the robbery.
But Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera found his testimony to be inconsistent and vague as he could not remember basic information such as what the robbers were wearing.
While he claimed that one of his accomplices was wearing a red t-shirt, Josef Aquilina, the employee who had held at gunpoint and bound with cable ties said the assailants were wearing dark clothes.
The robbers made off with almost €20,000 in cash apart from thousands of euro worth of mobile top-up cards, One4All gift vouchers and travellers’ cheques.
When Mr Galea was arrested two days after the robbery, he initially denied his involvement but later said he had held the employee at gunpoint while the other two collected the cash.
Two years later, he told Magistrate Carol Peralta that the masterminds behind the act were Mr Cassar and Mr Grech. Asked why he did not mention them before, he said he did not have the opportunity to talk about the case before.
He told the court that shortly after he was released from prison over another case, Mr Grech, who he knew from prison, approached him telling him he had a “job” for him which would yield some €100,000.
He claimed he later met Mr Grech, Mr Cassar, and another man, who he did not know, to discuss the hold up.
It later emerged that Mr Galea and Mr Cassar had argued about a woman, who they had both dated.
Both Mr Cassar and Mr Grech insisted that they were not involved in the robbery.
In her judgment, Magistrate Scerri Herrera ruled that the prosecution had failed to bring enough evidence to link the two men to the robbery. Moreover, there was no scientific evidence such as fingerprints or gunshot residue to back the charges.
She held that Mr Galea’s testimony was not convincing and did not corroborate the version of the hold-up victim, even on basics such as the number of shots fired.
Lawyers Edwards Gatt and David Gatt appeared for the men.