Neil Attard.Neil Attard.

Former Xgħajra Labour deputy mayor Neil Attard has been cleared of harassing his former girlfriend through a series of messages allegedly sent by means of fake Facebook profiles.

The woman had stated under oath that Mr Attard had seemed unwilling to accept their breakup and kept harassing her through messages, some 46,000 in all, sent via fake Facebook profiles.

READ: Xgħajra Labour councillor axed from the party

Although Mr Attard was charged with stalking and harassing his ex, when delivering judgment the court observed that although both the alleged victim and the prosecuting officer had made reference to a series of phone calls allegedly made by the accused, these constituted the subject of separate proceedings.

Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech observed that the proceedings lacked “all evidence in respect of phone calls.”

READ: Woman claims to have received 46,000 Facebook messages from stalker

Nor was there any shred of evidence regarding the alleged stalking, the court pointed out, thereby limiting itself to the accusation concerning the fake profiles, focusing upon testimony by the alleged victim herself.

The prosecution’s case rested entirely upon the result of investigations conducted “diligently and in a professional manner” by the Cybercrime Unit which managed to zoom in upon the alleged culprit within a short space of time, the court said. 

However, the reports based on data retrieved from Facebook as well as the testimony, constituted hearsay evidence and were thus inadmissible in terms of law.

Although a representative of a local service provider had confirmed under oath the information obtained from Facebook, that information had merely consisted in an IP address which Facebook had supplied to Maltese investigators.

No Facebook representative had been produced to testify in court and neither had such testimony been sought through letters rogatory or requests for legal assistance, the court observed.

On the strength of a long line of case-law on hearsay evidence, the court said it could not rely solely upon the testimony of two police officers who had testified about the information received from Facebook.

Nor did the accused’s admission before the investigating officer, three months after the date of the charges, suffice to prove the link between the alleged criminal activity and the accused, the court said, pointing out that the prosecution had also failed to prove when the fake profiles had been set up.

In the absence of sufficient evidence, the accused was cleared of criminal liability.

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