Jack Daboma requests Police Commissioner to proceed against spitting woman

Jack Daboma Ibibo, the black Hungarian student who was handcuffed by police officers after being slapped, spat at and racially abused while trying to organise a queue at the Valletta bus terminus, has filed a criminal complaint against the woman who spat at him.

The complaint, filed in court by lawyer Roberto Montalto today, refers to the incident of 1 July, which has been the subject of heavy coverage by the local news media.

Previously, the woman’s lawyer had told the MaltaToday that Jack Daboma had given a distorted version of events. The lawyer explained that at the time of the incident, the woman had been coming back from hospital, accompanied by her mother, after she had been operated on. The jostling of the crowd which the Hungarian had been trying to organise had led her to being pushed onto a metal railing.

The woman also alleged that Jack also tried to film her angry reaction and added that the chemical engineering student had called her a prostitute. She claimed that he had allegedly commented that “these things only happen in Malta,” to which she claimed to have replied that he was more than welcome to return to his country.

Some days later, after the incident was widely publicised, the woman had presented herself at the Valletta Police Station and filed a police report, making what is described in the complaint as “a pre-emptive police report...where she purposely and knowingly made a number of false accusations” about Daboma.

The criminal complaint requests that the Commissioner of Police initiate proceedings against the woman for inciting racial hatred, slightly injuring Daboma and making calumnious accusations about him in her police report.