Violent criminal gets three years’ jail after 20-year armed robbery case

A Siggiewi man who once belonged to a controversial clan of landowners in Baħrija, has been sentenced to three years in jail for the burglary of a restaurant and the assault of the arresting police officers, in 2003. 

Generoso Sammut, known as Jimmy, was acquitted of the attempted murder of a police sergeant during the Qawra arrest, but was found guilty of resisting arrest with violence, causing offence against the arresting official, stealing over €2,300 from the Granny’s Restaurant in Buġibba, threatening to run over an arresting police officer and of the possession of a firearm. Altogether he faced 15 charges. 

The case dates back to 2003 when two police officers arrived on the scene of a crime at the Fra Ben area in Qawra at 3:30am, where police apprehended the masked Sammut in the course of committing a burglary. 

Sammut violently resisted arrest when he was stopped in his car, by first using a can of pepper spray against one of the police officers. In a tussle with Sammut, who nearly overpowered the arresting officers, one of the police officers tried in vain to take control of Sammut’s revolver, so the other police officer shot at Sammut’s leg, because neither officer could keep the violent man under control. 

After his arrest, police found various items in his car such as crowbars and stolen cash. Sammut was also accused of trying to bribe the arresting officers with Lm10,000 (€23,000). 

Jimmy Sammut was one of a group of six shareholders in the controversial Eliza Company Ltd, which had laid claim over vast lands at Baħrija purchased from the estate of Baron Francesco Palmero Navarra. Farmers later reported being terrorised by the new owners to vacate the lands they had held under rental contracts for generations. 

In 2013, Sammut and a notary, Anthony Agius, were acquitted of having forged a cancer victim’s signature, mainly due to a lack of conclusive evidence. Both were charged with forging Nicholas Borg’s signature in August 2001, months before he died in November. 

Sammut had already been sentenced to 16 months in jail, together with a general interdiction, back in 2018, for giving false testimony in court. 

The perjury was connected to several civil cases instituted by brothers Michelangelo ‘Kelly’ and Alfred Fenech, who were suing Enemalta and Mediterranean Oil Bunkers Limited (MOBC) for damages, claiming to have been deliberately put out of business for political reasons. The Fenechs claimed their licences as oil traders had been suspended on order of the former Nationalist minister Ninu Zammit because of their links to former Labour Prime Minister Dom Mintoff. 

It was in one of their civil suits that Generoso Sammut had made an affidavit claiming he had known the Fenechs for 35 years; but then in 2013, Sammut was said to have given false testimony, ostensibly in order to get the Fenechs to lose their case. Judge Anthony Ellul at that point ordered Sammut to be investigated for perjury. Sammut later claimed it “made no difference to the magistrate” and that he “wanted to get out of this situation with no problems with either side.” 

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