Drunk diplomat's wife felt up officer

A DIPLOMAT'S wife who squeezed the bottom of a Victorian policeman while drunk and then injured a prison guard after her arrest has avoided a criminal conviction.

Muna Mawrid, 31, whose Norwegian husband is posted to Vietnam, staggered from the bar Amnesia at 5am on May 10 and grabbed the left cheek of the officer's bottom.

"I love you guys," she told him. "You look so f------ hot with your nine-millimetres."

Melbourne Magistrates Court heard yesterday that Mawrid, whose eyes were glazed and speech was slurred, was refused re-entry to the bar by a crowd controller because she was carrying water.

Prosecutor Diana Karamicov said Mawrid then argued with and abused the crowd controller.

Ms Karamicov told the court Mawrid was arrested for being drunk and lodged in a cell at the Melbourne Custody Centre, where she requested her asthma puffer.

She lunged at a female guard and pulled her into the cell and, in the struggle, the guard suffered a lacerated finger which needed stitches.

Mawrid, a Norwegian resident in Australia on a student's visa, pleaded guilty to recklessly causing injury and to being drunk in a public place.

Defence lawyer Jim Valos said Mawrid's husband sent her $500 fortnightly and she received a grant from the Norwegian Government for her interpreter's and translator's course at Monash University.

Mr Valos told the court that while it did not excuse his Iraqi-born client's behaviour, her father's treatment under dictator Saddam Hussein had "left permanent scars" on her which surfaced on the night.

A doctor's report two days after the incident had diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress syndrome, he said.

He urged magistrate Amanda Chambers not to convict Mawrid, a submission supported by Ms Karamicov.

Mawrid was put on a non-conviction 12-month undertaking to be of good behaviour, ordered to pay $500 to the court fund and to continue counselling for her condition.