A man has been jailed for two years and four months for attempting to assault a magistrate and threatening her  in her courtroom.

Pasqualino Cefai, a 36-year-old Gozitan who is already serving a seven-year jail term over a separate stabbing incident in a Gozo courtroom, was found guilty of threatening and insulting the magistrate, disobeying police orders, resisting and assaulting several officers, injuring a constable, breaching the peace and swearing in public.

The latest incident took place when Mr Cefai took exception with Magistrate Miriam Hayman for hearing the evidence presented by the prosecution in the absence of his lawyer Edward Gatt, who had failed to turn up for the sitting dealing with the  repayment of a loan.

He had insisted on being represented by his lawyer and was asked to quiet down numerous times. 

He then “lost it” when Magistrate Hayman ordered him out of the courtroom, and swore and threatened her. The police attempted to restrain him, upon which the accused grabbed Inspector Johann Fenech by the neck, ripped his tie and threatened to kill him or hurt his family.

The police managed to handcuff him but the accused continued being disruptive in the corridors. He was then taken to the lock-up via the lift. Despite calming down in the lift, he once again became agitated upon being taken to the lock-up. He slightly injured a police officer when he hit him with the handcuff.

The accused also repeatedly banged his head against the lockers and broke a mirror.

 Testifying before Magistrate Audrey Demicoli, Dr Gatt said that he was not present in the courtroom on the day of the incident because he was working on a case within the Criminal Court of Appeals at the time of the incident.

Dr Gatt said he had asked Magistrate Hayman not to proceed without him because his client became very nervous if he was not assisted by him. The lawyer insisted that the court had chosen to preside over the sitting in his absence, despite the fact that it had other cases to attend to on the day and could therefore easily have awaited him.

Handing down the judgment, Magistrate Demicoli noted that while the court agreed with the accused’s right to insist to be assisted by his defence lawyer, on the other hand the accused had no right to exert such a right by shouting, threatening and behaving aggressively.

 The court also pointed out that while it always did its utmost to appoint a date and time for the sitting and to send out staff to summon or call the defence lawyers, it felt that the lawyers should also do their utmost from their end to ensure that they are present at the relevant sittings.