Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/191652
5 News frightened of Borg, the women chose to get up and follow him off the bus. "Since when do frightened people leave the safety of the bus to get closer to the man who allegedly assaulted them?" the lawyer demanded, continuing, "What they were after was revenge for the verbal argument that had taken place on the bus." When Borg got out of the bus and turned to wave to his colleague, the girls stood right behind him. What followed is unclear. The accused claimed the women grabbed his shoulder and as he turned, they lost their footing. The women claimed Borg assaulted them and threw them to the ground. In the scuffle that followed, the three suffered slight injuries, but Borg did not seek medical help, as he thought nothing of the incident. While both women presented medical certificates, the accused only exhibited photos of scratch marks around his neck. The defence pointed to a recent court judgement which had ruled that, in order to find an aggressor guilty of attempting to cause grievous injuries, the prosecution must prove that the aggressor had a premeditated intent to injure his victim grievously. This had not been proven in court, Sciriha said. Sciriha explained that, years prior to the incident, the accused had been involved in a work accident, which had left him suffering from partial disability. The accident had also affected Borg's reasoning abilities. This was reinforced by the report of an orthopaedic surgeon, who stated that Borg had lost articulation in his left arm. When Borg had moved his left arm between himself and the alleged victims, he did so as an act of self-protection and not to force the latter against the bus. "He could not block or use force with his left arm, as he is medically unable to do so," the lawyer told the court. In the first court sitting, the two young women took the witness stand. Their behaviour in court earned them severe reprimands from Magistrate Neville Camilleri (but the court's recording system failed and there are no records in the proceedings of the exchanges). In the following sitting, the women were cross-examined by the defence, which repeated the questions asked in the previous session. The defence claimed that both the alleged victims had attended court after rehearsing their replies. "Their identical, parrot-like answers prove the two had pre-agreed on what to say," Sciriha said. "This makes their evidence unreliable." When asked what they understood when told to behave decently in public, the two replied identically: "That phrase means nothing to me." Yet the two disagreed on a number of details. While one claimed they were pushed, the other said they were grabbed and pulled down; and only one of the alleged victims recalled the accused saying he was 'scared of nothing and no one'. The defence argued that the accused was in his own way following the rules set down by his employer. He assumed that through what he interpreted as immoral actions, the women had scandalised the passengers on the bus, the majority of whom were children and students. He had acted to stop the immorality. "Circumstances do not lie but they may deceive," Sciriha said, pointing out that the two youths had taunted and provoked Borg incessantly, yet the screen grab exhibited by the prosecution simply showed the accused with his hand raised in a threatening gesture. The defence concluded that the accused, a man who, notwithstanding his limitations, had tried to abide by company rules and uphold decent behaviour had finished in the dock accused of intentionally injuring two women. Magistrate Neville Camilleri is expected to deliver a judgement at the end of January 2014. Inspector Kylie Borg is acting for the prosecution. maltatoday, SUNDAY, 13 OCTOBER 2013 Local company offers high-level security to high-risk firms TIM ATTARD MONTALTO LOCAL company Alberta, for years associated with home security and fire protection, is now venturing into new territory, offering vulnerable people and companies even higherlevel security services, such as phonetapping prevention measures, debugging, security sweeps and, on a more wide scale, protection from terrorism or criminal gangs. Malta is generally understood to be an island immune from real political threats or far off from the theatre of international espionage, but Duncan Barbaro Sant, a director of Alberta, believes that it would be wrong for the Maltese to consider themselves immune. "Malta may be safe in the sense that it is relatively harmless for one to go out for a walk at night. But when it comes to security at a higher level, Malta cannot be considered exempt from threats, especially because of its geographical position between North Africa and Europe." Barbaro Sant said the Maltese seem to be "reactive by nature, as opposed to proactive", adding that people here might not always give real security the importance it merits. "We don't seem to give much importance to national security. And for that matter, we don't give much importance to individual security either. We seem to reason that since there has not been any major threat to our security in the past, then there is no real point in spending our time and money on taking security measures. "But it would be dangerous to take the view that no news is good news. After all, if there is no news, it means that our security services are doing their job," he said. Alberta Technical Surveillance Counter Measures (TSCM) has made the Alberta Group the first private, local company to provide a full range of security services targeting those in high-risk jobs and in high-risk per- sonal situations. TSCM's team is UKtrained and has undergone the same expert training as the British intelligence agency. Karen Zerafa, a criminology graduate assisting Barbaro Sant, said TSCM is usually sought out by big companies but has also handled individual cases. "Our usual clientele are larger companies such as hotels, embassies and casinos. That being said, we have had no less than 16 individual cases in the past two years. These would usually be persons involved in politics, or people going through contentious court cases, such as separation or divorce, looking for close protection," Zerafa said. One service TSCM will be offering is the 'back-sweep', a process by which a designated area is thoroughly examined for recorders, hidden cameras or other such devices. "It's a job that's made harder by the fact that there are many different types of recording devices today," added Zerafa. "A mobile is certainly the simplest recording device, but it is by no means the only one. The pen, for instance, is one of the oldest devices in use and it could still be used today as a recording device. "We're not just talking about homes and office spaces here. The same could be said about cars and boats: a car can be a mobile home." Alberta TSCM is now offering its services to companies in hotspots such as Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Nigeria – areas which, unlike Malta, are far from being safe havens. University of Malta soars in anti-plagiarist rankings THE University of Malta has employed amongst one of the most advanced anti-plagiarising systems, a study by Coventry University, in the UK has found. The UK has the most mature system in Europe for promoting academic integrity among students, according to study of universities' plagiarism software, consistency of sanctions, and prevention policies. "There's no doubt that in the UK we're a lot more advanced than most countries, in most aspects," Irene Glendinning, principal investigator on the Impact of Policies for Plagiarism in Higher Education across Europe project, told the Times Literary Supplement. The study – based on a voluntary and anonymous survey of about 5,000 students, teachers and senior managers, and on interviews with representatives of national higher education bodies – found Austria and Sweden to have the next most advanced systems, followed by the Republic of Ireland and Malta. Bulgaria and Spain were tied in last place among 27 European Union nations, both performing poorly on all criteria except their knowledge and understanding of academic integrity. Germany, Italy and France were all ranked in the lower half of the table. In 2009, the University of Malta resorted to a controversial American software programme, which sources an archive of millions of academic papers and students' assignments from all over the world to catch out plagiarists. Turnitin detects plagiarism from the internet, by comparing papers and essays from a database of over 22 million papers, and archived journals. However, the essays submitted will also be storied inside the Turnitin database to prevent the use of one student's paper by another student and identify any matching text between papers. The problem of plagiarism from the internet in Malta was first raised in 2005 by former pro-rector and university ombudsman Charles Farrugia, who appealed to all lecturers who feel "plagued by plagiarism" to share their experiences before university decides on the plan of action. Farrugia had recounted what he described "the most ludicrous case of plagiarism" when a student admitting being unable to write "anything better" than the thesis he had copied from. "His answer was: 'Why did you bring me here? That thesis was too good, I couldn't write anything better'." Glendinning said that in Spain students reported that tools to detect plagiarism were rarely used, and only one-third said there were policies for dealing with the problem. In other countries such as France, some respondents suggested that academic integrity was not an issue that needed to be addressed at the undergraduate stage, she added. It was surprising how "primitive" systems for dealing with academic integrity were in countries such as Germany and Finland, which had otherwise excellent reputations for education, Glendinning said. "We found some pockets of good practice there, but most people really are in the Dark Ages in comparison with what's going on in the UK and anglophone countries such as Australia and the US," she said. The full results of the project, including country breakdowns, will be published by the end of November. Austria/Belgium/Bulgaria/Czech Republic/ Denmark/Estonia/France/Germany/Hungary/ Italy/Luxemburg/Norway/Netherlands/ Poland/Portugal/Romania/Spain/ Slovakia/Slovenia/Sweden/Switzerland INTERNATIONAL FREIGHT SERVICES +356 21 221 999 expresslogigroup.com