President’s son calls on Courts to confirm one month jail term to pardoned mother

Teacher and mother Anna Cassar, who was released from prison last month following a Presidential pardon on a three month jail term, for not allowing her estranged husband access to her son, is facing the prospect of going to jail for another month.

Cassar was sentenced to another jail term last February by Magistrate Antonio Vella and is currently appealing the judgment.

She has also petitioned President George Abela to be granted a second pardon.

But in a bizarre twist of events, lawyer Robert Abela - appearing for Cassar's husband - made an impassioned submission to Mr. Justice Lawrence Quintano, presiding over the Criminal Court of Appeal, to "confirm the judgment."

Abela argued that contrary to what Anna Cassar's defence is arguing, "the fact is that the accused has constantly defied Court Orders, and it is untrue that the inferior courts were too harsh on her."

The lawyer's submissions ran in total contradiction to the hype that led to Cassar's pardon last month, to the extent that Abela stressed that the inferior courts had in fact been initially lenient and  conditionally discharged the accused, and then imposed effective jail terms for her alleged "repeated defiance of court orders."

He claimed that Cassar had manipulated her son to the point that at 17 years of age, he was subjected to study with his mother.

"We know that the boy is now a young man and started his first year at university, but is it normal that an 18 year-old man can't do without his mother when he studies?" Abela asked.

Both the father, and Abela said that the mother had even threatened the boy that she would exclude him from her will, should he decide to go and live with his father.

The lawyer was rebutting an argument made by defence counsel Ludwic Caruana who is appearing for Caruana, who claimed that her son had a chemistry exam the day after he had to visit his father, and it was her son who panicked and refused to go because he had to study.

Anna Cassar - who is fighting a one month jail term for not granting her estranged husband access to his son on the 9,^, 15, and 16 of October 2011 - took the witness stand to insist that she cannot oblige a 17 year-old boy to visit his father.

"When he was younger I had full control, but today, the boy has his own mind, and I cannot drag him to his father," she said.

Cassar's husband, who also took the witness stand produced evidence that even the Police Sergeant who handled the Police reports over the denied access, was against the Presidential pardon.

Writing on Facebook, Sergeant Raymond Ambrogio wrote: "I am the Sergeant who handled and investigated the reports concerning both mother and father. I confirm what the father said, and I also confirm that she threatened to cut him out of her will. I insist that the Presidential pardon was granted too hastily.The Courts were correct three times. When I spoke with the son, it was clear that he has an interest to allow his father particpate in his life"

Mr. Justice Lawrence Quintano has put off the case for judgment to March 1, 2013.