The magistrates’ court yesterday heard how a man and his daughter were assaulted by a knife-wielding Syrian national while they were driving along on a motorcycle, minding their own business.

Ray Caruana was testifying against Gzira resident Jihad Alloudami, 35, who is accused of attempting to seriously injure Mr Caruana and his daughter with a pointed instrument earlier this month.

Mr Caruana told the court, presided over by magistrate Antonio Mizzi, that he had never even laid eyes on the accused prior to the unprovoked attack.

He said that he was on his motorcycle with his daughter who riding pillion when the accused put his leg out in an attempt to knock them off the vehicle as they made their way from Gzira to Sliema and started to insult them.

Mr Caruana told the court that he could not understand the man’s behaviour. He said he carried on driving, but the accused got into a car and started to follow them, so he pulled in between two parked cars. “I tried to defend myself, and since I was wearing a crash helmet, the accused went back to his car and produced a knife with a red handle. I carried on defending myself, so he turned on my daughter and put the knife to her neck,” said the witness.

He said that the accused then went back to his car again and produced a weapon which he believed was a sword. However, the prosecution exhibited both weapons and one in fact was a red-handled knife, but the other was a long metal rod.

Mr Caruana said both he and his daughter were left traumatized by the incident. “22 days have passed and my daughter still has nightmares and wakes up in tears,” said Mr Caruana.

Police inspector Malcolm Spiteri said that he wanted to produce Mr Caruana’s daughter as a witness, but magistrate Mizzi overruled, saying that it would not be fair to produce her as a witness in court after all that happened, and told her father to look after her.

The accused’s lawyer, Michael Sciriha told the court that his client had told him that there was a difficult to cope with atmosphere in Gzira as certain foreign elements of society were not really accepted by the locals.

Dr Sciriha said that Gzira is like Brighton in the UK where certain nationalities are not tolerated by the local populace. He said that his client was an excellent tile layer and wished to carry on with his job and was also ready to leave Gzira to find somewhere else to live, adding that he would be applying for bail in the next court sitting on 3 August.

The case continues.