Facebook trio who mocked injured police officer granted bail

Three youths who were charged in court last week with posting hate comments against the Police to Facebook have been granted bail after spending more than a week behind bars.

Kylie Cutajar, 21, from St. Venera, Ritmark Borg, 28, from Paola and Josef D’Amato, 24 from Marsa all pleaded not guilty to the charges of publicly inciting persons to commit a crime, and misuse of electronic communications equipment when they left Facebook comments underneath news articles about PC Simon Schembri, who was left fighting for his life and had a limb amputated after a young motorist ran him over.

Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit granted Cutajarand D’Amato bail against a deposit of €300 and a personal guarantee of €5,000, while also requiring them to sign a bail book three times a week and to observe a curfew between 7am and midnight.

During the compilation of evidence, which started on Tuesday, Inspectors Joseph Busuttil and John Spiteri both took the stand, telling magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit how the police had received a number of internal and external complaints about a conversation involving the three accused.

Lawyer Franco Debono, who took up the defence of two of the accused in yesterday's sitting, asked the police to name the complainants, but the witnesses did not have the information at hand, promising to bring it in the next sitting instead.

“With your oath, tell everybody here who made the criminal complaint,” asked Debono as the sitting became more heated.

Busuttil said the victim’s family had told his lawyer to instruct the police to act against the three and anyone else who made similar comments.

“I don’t believe there is a need for a criminal complaint but rest assured that there are a lot of officers who want to,” Spiteri said.

“I don’t want all the weight of the country’s crime to be placed on these three people.” Debono submitted.

“Of the thousands of insults and negative comments made against Liam Debono, how many have you felt the need to prosecute?” asked the lawyer, with the prosecution replying that they were not informed of any of them and that nobody had asked them to prosecute people who made any comments about Liam Debono.

Spiteri explained that the police had asked the accused if they had been threatened, but they didn’t wish to reveal the identity of whoever had threatened them. “If we get information we will prosecute them too,” Spiteri said.

He invited the lawyer to pass on any information he had. “Rest assured that there is not enough space in Corradino for all the people,” said the inspector.

The defence made submissions on bail this afternoon, after which the court announced that it would deliver a decree from chambers, most likely tomorrow.