Man charged with threatening Karl Stagno Navarra released on bail
Accused had gone to his Karl Stagno Navarra’s house carrying a crash helmet, leading the witness to fear ‘he was going to break down my door’
A man accused of insulting and threatening ONE TV host Karl Stagno Navarra over an unpaid debt was released on bail Thursday, after the alleged victim testified.
From the witness stand, Stagno Navarra told Magistrate Giannella Camilleri Busuttil that the defendant, Jean Pierre Schembri, had gone to his house carrying a crash helmet, leading the witness to fear “he was going to break down my door.”
Schembri had gone to demand money which was owed to him for a car he had sold to Stagno Navarra.
He had contacted the police after the man had left, he said, which had resulted in a second visit by Schembri, incensed by this fact.
The victim said that his face had been cut by pieces of glass from a vase which the man had smashed during that visit. “He slammed the glass vase on a table and bits of glass hit me in the face…”
Schembri had put his hand on Stagno Navarra’s throat, which the witness described as an attempt to “strangle or kill me.”
“I had received specialised training to deal with dangerous situations when I was employed by a news agency,” Stagno Navarra said. “I saw great fury in his eyes when he found out that I had gone to the police.”
The man had eventually calmed down and had fled when the TV presenter told him that he was going to call the Rapid Intervention Unit.
From the witness stand, the TV presenter said that he had received threatening voice and text messages from the defendant’s number
The witness was asked to exhibit receipts for the payments he had made, handing over 19.
He also exhibited a ledger he kept of further payments, which the defendant would sign.
At some point he stopped recognising his own signature “and that’s when the trouble began.”
Asked about the car purchased from the defendant, a Nissan Qashqai, Stagno Navarra said: “He came to my workplace and told me he was going to take the car back, and I said take it back because it’s cursed.” But despite taking it back, the man had continued to demand payment, he said.
“The blackmail was intended to cause maximum damage. I am a public person…”
Stagno Navarra exhibited screenshots of text conversations and recordings of voice notes he had received from the accused, warning the court that they contained “a lot of blasphemy,” adding that he would have to bring the rest in the next sitting, because there were so many.
The court ordered that the WhatsApp voice notes be played in court. The messages were indeed peppered with colourful and creative phrases, and variations on the central theme of the man telling Stagno Navarra to expect to find him “outside your house tomorrow at 7:30am.”
A ripple of stifled laughter went around the courtroom when the defendant was heard, on the last recording to be played in court, to sign off with the phrase “u happy birthday ja pufta.”
The menace in the man’s voice was audible, but the messages, foul mouthed as they were, did not seem to contain explicit threats, their focus being demands that Stagno Navarra bring him the money without further delay.
Insisting that he had paid the defendant over €10,000 for the car, “I have nothing against him,” Stagno Navarra told the court. “When I would ask him for receipts and he didn’t bring them, he would lose his temper.”
“He conveniently doesn't mention that when I bought this car, it was part exchange with another car that I had previously bought from him. A Mini Minor.”
“Not only did he never give me a receipt, but the car had defective day running lights,” said the victim. “I was forced to drive with brights because the bulb was missing.”
Stagno Navarra alleged that records of the payments that he would keep in his car went missing, providing the defendant with “the perfect alibi.”
“I don’t make reports lightly. The choice I had was to either do so or to commit suicide. Had I not done so, he would have murdered me,” Stagno Navarra said.
After the alleged victim finished testifying for today, lawyer Lennox Vella, who is assisting Schembri, requested bail.
Lawyer Franco Debono, appearing for Stagno Navarra, told the court that his client “only asks that he be allowed to live in peace and that these incidents do not repeat themselves.”
“He is not objecting to bail, only that he understands that if he has any claims to make, there are legal ways to go about making them,” Debono said.
Upholding the request, the court released the man on bail, which was secured by a €500 deposit and a personal guarantee of €2,500, ordering him not to approach, directly or indirectly, or in any way follow the movements of the prosecution witnesses, specifying that Stagno Navarra was one of them. He was also ordered to sign a bail book every day and stay out of Siggiewi.
The court warned Schembri that besides the confiscation of his bail security any bail breaches he might commit would also carry additional punishments.
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