Floriana man cleared of €233,000 heist from Portomaso jewellery

A criminal case against a Floriana man who was accused of participating in the 2007 Portomaso jewellery heist has collapsed, a magistrate holding that none of the many charges against him had stood up to scrutiny.

40-year-old Romeo Bone from Floriana had been accused of carrying out the armed robbery of the Luxe Pavilion Diamonds International outlet in Portomaso, St. Julians in February 2007, in which almost €233,000 worth of jewellery was stolen.

He had faced a plethora of charges, which included theft aggravated by violence, means, time and value of the thing stolen, illegal arrest and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.

Witnesses had testified that two men, their faces obscured with nylon tights had held up the shop with a revolver on the 8th February 2007 at around 7:50pm. One man had stood by the door while the other ransacked the shop’s safe.

But Magistrate Neville Camilleri, presiding the court of magistrates as a court of criminal judicature, had not been provided with unambiguous evidence pointing to the men’s guilt.

There had been no forensic evidence linking Bone to the crime, noted the court, and Bone had only been arrested and charged after his fingerprint was found on the battery of a van parked in front of the police car at the police station, blocking its exit.

Further compounding the prosecution’s problems was the fact that the accused had not been selected by either one of the shop assistants in several identification parades.

Witnesses had testified that the accused resembled as the person wearing the tights over his face, waiting for his accomplice to exit the shop but had contradicted each other with regards to whether the robbers had been wearing boiler suits or security guard uniforms while carrying out the heist. One shop assistant had told the court that the accused could not have been the person who had robbed her at gunpoint, as his stature was different.

The court, bearing this in mind, held that none of the accusations levelled against Bone had been sufficiently proven and ordered his release.

Lawyer Kathleen Grima was defence counsel to Bone.