Attard hold-up puts bail ‘under fire’

The hold-up on Friday night highlights how Police work needs to be “supported” and how courts should not hand out provisional liberty for certain “serious offences”, Justice and Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici says.

Asked for a reaction to the wide-spread anger at the way how the Courts are allowing offenders responsible for serious criminals, Mifsud Bonnici maintained that the mechanism for provisory liberty will be internally revaluated.

His comments are featured in the weekly newspaper Illum.

Early on Saturday morning, public outrage mounted as news got around that one of the burglars involved in an armed hold-up the night before on an Attard jeweller was only recently released on pledge by the Courts - despite having the seriousness of the offence in question.

The alleged aggressor, Darren Debono, aged 33 from Marsascala, was admitted into hospital on Friday evening with a bullet in his leg, fired from his own firearm after he and two accomplices attempted to overpower the jeweller and his son.On 30 June, Debono was involved in an aborted armed bank heist on the HSBC office which culminated in a shoot-out with police where he took a bullet in the jaw – the splinters of which remain to this day.

READ MORE in Illum’s digital edition.