A 42-year-old Egyptian man living in Gozo was yesterday jailed for three years and nine months after he was found guilty of breaking into an elderly woman’s house, causing more than Lm10 damages to her house and stealing Lm390 worth in cash and valuable on the afternoon of 14 June 2001.
After deliberating for almost five hours on Tuesday, the jury returned their verdict yesterday at 9.30am and found Ibrahim Hafes Ibrahim El-Degwi, a farmer living in Xaghra, guilty by seven votes to two.
He was also found guilty of relapsing.
In fact, he had collected another four convictions on illegal immigration, falsely accusing a prison official, escaping from the Police Headquarters, threatening, insulting and assaulting a person and breaching the peace.
For each conviction he was given suspended jail terms.
In passing down his judgment, Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono said the ever increasing rate of criminality targeting elderly people should be quelled and the courts must be firm in deterring such crimes. To this end he jailed the man three months short of the maximum term permitted by the law. The judge postponed the delivery of the judgement by a few minutes in order to let the din made by celebrating graduates in Republic Street die down.
El-Degwi was standing trial after he verbally admitted to police that he broke into Maria Attard’s house while she was hearing mass and visiting her doctor.
He did so after he was arrested in connection with the same woman’s murder which took place in February 2002. Her corpse was found at the bottom of her well in Xaghra.
El-Degwi had told the police that he broke in her house and found nothing to steal. In his defence, he said that since there was nothing to steal the first time round, it made no sense for him to break in a second time. When asked to make a statement, the man declined to answer questions posed to him by the interrogators.
Head of the Attorney General prosecution unit, Dr Anthony Barbara, led the prosecution, while Dr Franco Debono and Dr Jose` Herrera appeared for the accused.