A man who had been conditionally discharged for one year after being found guilty of heroin possession, but not of trafficking the drug, was jailed for a year yesterday after a Court of Criminal Appeal found him guilty of the drug trafficking charge.

Serbian Ivan Dolac was originally charged with heroin possession and heroin trafficking. The Magistrates’ Court found him not guilty of the trafficking charge but guilty of heroin possession and he was conditionally discharged for one year.

The Attorney General appealed against the judgement, claiming that, first of all, the first court had not taken into consideration all the evidence it heard and secondly, that even the drug possession charge should have carried an effective jail term.

In his judgement, Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono said the Court of Criminal Appeal did not understand how the Magistrates’ Court could have declared that the prosecution had not managed to prove its case in respect of the trafficking charge, just because of reasonable doubt that the Serbian did not understand the prosecution’s questions in the English language.

Mr Justice Galea Debono said that the first court had misinterpreted the evidence and he therefore declared Dolac guilty of drug trafficking, with the drug possession charge being absorbed by the first charge.

He converted the one-year conditional discharge to a one-year effective jail term and also fined Dolac Lm500.