Habitually violent criminal receives four-year prison sentence for injuring woman and stealing her phone

A man with past convictions for violent crimes has once again been jailed, this time for stealing items from a parked car and slightly injuring the woman who owned it.

32-year-old Wadea Al Maghrbi, a homeless Libyan national, was sentenced to imprisonment for four years by magistrate Gabriella Vella in connection with the March 2022 incident in which  Al Maghrbi had broken into a car in Floriana and had been in the process of stealing its contents, when he was interrupted by the return of the vehicle’s owner. 

Al Maghrbi has had several run-ins with the law, dating at least as far back as 2015 when he was accused of stabbing a housemate in 2016, and was indicted in 2021 for attempting to beat another man to death with a metal bar.

When the woman confronted the thief, he had assaulted her and then fled. Using CCTV footage and information provided by the woman, police had traced the man to Triq it-Tigrija, Marsa where he was arrested that same afternoon.

Al Maghrbi had been released from prison just months before committing this offence, after serving a sentence for a violent robbery in which he had also held a woman against her will and injured her. 

The man’s latest victim had told the court how he had initially left his bag in her car by mistake when she had disrupted the theft, but returned as she was about to take it to the police station.

A struggle ensued between the thief and his victim, who refused to let go of Al Maghrbi’s bag while the man shouted at her in a language she did not understand. “At one point I started to kick him to make him let go of the bag and know where my bag was,” she testified.

But the thief managed to pull her out of the car and threw her to the ground. “He slammed me on the pavement and dragged me. Then he started to hit me in the face with his backpack to make me let go, all the while banging my head against the pavement.”

The pain eventually made the woman let go of the bag, at which point her assailant ran off.

She was later taken to a polyclinic, where her injuries were classified as slight.

The victim declared that the stolen designer handbag had contained an iPhone 13, worth over €1,000. Before being discovered, the thief had taken the time to transfer the rest of the handbag’s contents into another bag.

Inspector Lydon Zammit had told the court that the defendant had denied having had any involvement in the robbery or assaulting the woman, but after being shown CCTV footage, had conceded that he had been in the area by coincidence. 

The police were later informed by the victim that she had been notified that her mobile had been switched on and was in Triq il-Gerrejja, in Marsa, the phone’s remote location data indicated it was in exactly the same spot where Al Maghrbi had been arrested.

However, when the police went to the location to search for the stolen device, it was no longer there. A subsequent search of the area and of individuals who were in the area did not recover the phone.

Wadea Al Maghrbi was charged the next day, on March 9.

In addition to the four-year prison sentence, the court also issued a three-year restraining order in favour of the victim.

Police Inspectors Lydon Zammit, Stephen Gulia and Gabriel Micallef prosecuted.