Court is no ‘washing machine’ to clean one’s reputation - Magistrate

Three witnesses who testified in a pending civil case have been acquitted of perjury by a court which deemed their testimony as irrelevant to the outcome of proceedings. In addition, the Gozo Court presided by Magistrate Joe Mifsud warned on the increasing number of cases especially on the sister island, of people who file perjury complaints lightly. The courts should not serve as fora to accentuate divisions even on trivial matters, and the police need to tread carefully on such cases to prevent abuse, he said. The case involved pending civil proceedings which had been instituted by Maurice Hili who was seeking compensation from Francis Attard, Carmel Attard and Carmel Vella, for the injuries sustained in an incident dating back to August 2001. During these proceedings the court had accepted a request, through which Mr Hili's son, his daughter and husband, had been summoned to testify over a separate incident which was not related at all to the case. This was done to clear Mr Hili's reputation. Subsequently, the Attards' filed an application claiming that Mr Hili's relatives had committed perjury. In his ruling Magistrate Joe Mifsud expressed his disagreement for such practice,...

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