Court hears how man raped, punched and harassed woman he was having an affair with

A court has heard an account of how a woman was allegedly beaten and raped by a married Libyan father of two, last year.

Criminal proceedings against Ali S Ali Saad, 38, a Shisha cafe manager from Libya continued before magistrate Ian Farrugia this morning with police Inspector Lara Butters taking the witness stand.

The Italian victim had said that she and the accused had had an argument at home in May after he had found another man there. The argument turned violent with the man punching her several times, she had told the police.

The woman had also filed a report in May 2018, telling officers that she had been at home with a male friend at 10pm one night and had started receiving a lot of messages and phonecalls from the accused.

Shortly afterwards he knocked at her door. She told him to stop and to go away, but the man only got more irate. The woman had gone on the balcony to call for help but had found him waiting for her on the balcony.

He demanded to know what she was doing with another man in her apartment, before pushing her on to the sofa and beating her, leaving her with slight injuries, Inspector Butters said.

To discontinue the argument, the woman had convinced her assailant to go with her to a pizzeria, as she knew the owner of the place. Once there, she locked herself in a bathroom and called the police. 

The woman had also told the police that around four months prior she had been raped by the accused. Inspector Butters told the court that on another occasion, he had raped her in his car at Bahar ic-Caghaq.

Saad had been married at the time and had two children aged three and five. The pair had been having an affair for some time, she said.

The victim ended up suffering from panic attacks for six months because the accused had bombarded her with harassing messages, the court was told.

The accused denied the charges, telling the police that the woman would slap herself. On the rape charge, he had claimed that they had been in the car and he had gone to buy water and upon his return, had found her naked in the car.

The inspector exhibited a number of chat logs from Viber and Facebook between Saad and the alleged victim, which showed his persistence, she said.

As the sitting concluded, the woman was placed under a protection order which prohibits the accused from communicating with or approaching the woman in any way.

The court warned him that he faced up to seven years prison and large fine if he tried to speak to her. “This isn’t a joke. It is an order of the court that he cannot approach her,” the magistrate told the interpreter. “If they walk past each other and he gives her so much as a bad look, I will have him arrested.”