A man who was captured on camera whipping his horse in a savage way was cleared of animal cruelty after a court noted that he used a whip to prevent the horse from badly injuring an 18-month old girl who escaped from her mother and entered the stable.
Mosta resident Elton Saliba, 37, had been charged after the video footage of the horse beating surfaced on social media and went viral. The incident happened in May 2014 in a stable in Maghtab.
The footage was passed onto the police for further investigation while the international NGO - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) - uploaded the footage of the horse beating, initially posted on YouTube, on its website.
Magistrate Audrey Demicoli heard that from the very beginning, the man told police he was concerned the horse would injure the toddler and in order to control the horse, he used the whip until the child's father arrived.
Rennie Zammit, the child's father, told the court that he was speaking to Mr Saliba outside the stable when his child escaped from her mother and entered the stable next to the horse. He said Mr Saliba's immediate reaction was to stop the horse from biting his daughter's head.
Mr Saliba explained to the court that his Ukrainian girlfriend filmed the horse beating and posted it online as a vendetta because “she was angry at him for refusing to marry her and was forced to leave Malta as a result”.
The magistrate noted that the court failed to see that Mr Saliba had the criminal intention to injure or hurt the horse when he whipped it to stop it from injuring a toddler. The magistrate said the court had no reason to doubt that this was the case.
She said the video used as evidence by the prosecution in this case was far too short for experts to determine whether the horse had suffered as a result of the incident.
The prosecution did not present any proof of any injuries the horse may have suffered neither, the magistrate noted.
Police inspector Nicholas Vella prosecuted while lawyers Franco Debono and Amadeus Cachia appeared for the man.