A 26-year-old was yesterday jailed for a year after he was found guilty of stealing around Lm3,200 worth of objects from a car.

Johann Giovanni Attard, from Birkirkara, was found guilty of stealing these objects from a rented car parked at Paradise Bay, on 21 July 2006. He was also found guilty of breaking into the car by smashing its rear windscreen.

In handing down her judgment, magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera held that Attard evidently had not yet learnt from his past mistakes, even though he had been found guilty of theft twice and had been jailed, fined and placed under probation.

The man was apprehended by the police on the same day at around midnight, after he was stopped at a road block in Marsa. The police stopped him as he the way he looked at them and tried to avoid being stopped made him appear suspicious.

The police found the stolen goods in the back seat of his car. When asked how he came into possession of the items, which included a digital camera, a watch and toiletries, Attard claimed that at 8.30pm, while in the company of his girlfriend, he was relieving himself in the area of Fra Ben in Qawra, and saw the objects scattered on the ground, whereupon he picked them up, put them in a bag and took them.

The man said that his girlfriend, who was also in his car when the police stopped him, was not aware of what he had done.

Police Inspector Michael Mallia led the prosecution.