Exclusive: ‘I Woke Up In Mater Dei’ – Paceville Beating Victim Opens Up About NYE Bouncer Attack
Ahmed Albarjo intended to kick the new year off by letting his hair down at a Pacevile nightclub and partying the night away. Instead, his 2024 started with a confrontation with police officers and bouncers, a brutal beating and a stay at Mater Dei.
Albarjo, a 25-year-old Sudanese MCAST student and apprentice technician, spoke to Lovin Malta about his experience after footage emerged of him suffering a public beating by a group of bouncers.
“I had been to Paceville twice before but I had never gone to Havana and it was my dream to go there,” he said.
Albarjo said the bouncer at the door asked him for his ID and he showed him a photo on his phone of his “yellow document”, a leaflet issued by immigration police to asylum seekers who are found ineligible for refugee status. Albarjo is appealing this decision.
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“I showed him this photo but he told me I needed to present a physical ID,” he said. “I asked him why but he didn’t answer and he pushed me and punched me in the face. If there are CCTV cameras in the vicinity, they can confirm this.”
“I then turned to the bouncer’s colleague and asked him why he hit me, but he hit me twice too, damaging my teeth and causing blood to pour out of my nose.”
Hurt and angry, Albarjo reported the bouncers to a group of police officers who were stationed up the road but they told him to file a report at the police station.
He then turned on his phone and told them that unless they accompanied him to the club to take action against the bouncers, he was going to return and fight them himself.
However, the police officers insisted that he file a report at the police station and one of them argued that they could not tell on the spot whether the blood on his face was caused by his injuries or not.
He stressed to the police that he was going to fight the bouncers himself and the officers let him go.
“I was very angry back then and I felt as though the police didn’t want to help me,” Albarjo told Lovin Malta. “I wasn’t going to go back home and cry in my bed. I am a man, I was attacked and I felt I had to fight back. I will die for my rights.”
“As I approached the bouncers, I was pushed by them and fell to the floor, shattering a glass bottle,” he continued. “I picked up a piece of glass and threw it in self defence.”
“The bouncers pushed me and began coming from everywhere. I realised there were too many of them and tried to escape, but I found myself on the floor. The next thing I know I woke up in Mater Dei.”
Police are investigating the incident.
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The incident is by no means the first time a group of Paceville bouncers physically attacked someone in public, and has led to intensified discussion about the state of security in the party district.
PN MP Albert Buttigieg has asked Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri for an update on a promise he made in 2022 to set up a specialised police squad focused on security in Paceville.
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