A bar owner beaten by four thugs in a savage attack at work fears he has been scarred for life.

And victim Victor Rudolph Alleyne slammed a ?Third World? Police investigation process he claims put him face-to-face with an identity parade line-up ? that could have included the men who beat him.today reveals the sickening details of the assault on Mr. Alleyne, who had his eye socket smashed when one of his attackers struck him with a glass bottle.

The 54-year-old needed plastic surgery after his nose was broken in three places amid a flurry of kicks and punches.

Now the owner of Spring Garden restaurant has a metal plate under his left eye and a three-inch scar he fears is permanent. Doctors are unsure whether the double vision in his left eye will ever clear.

Mr. Alleyne?s serious facial injuries draw striking parallels with those suffered by Rui Mederios, the football fan attacked by a four-man gang outside a city centre bar earlier this month. He also needed plastic surgery.

As fears grow about levels of violence on Hamilton?s streets, Barbados-born bar owner Mr. Alleyne criticised the Police response to his bloody street beating.

He also said there was no one-way glass partition in the room where his ID parade took place ? potentially meaning that the men behind the attack could have seen who the victim and other witnesses picked out.

?Police are not going to solve crime in Bermuda if that?s the way they are going to go about things,? he said yesterday. ?People have to be protected.?

He said he decided to speak out about his ordeal because he wanted to see the culprits brought to justice.

Mr. Alleyne said that the unprovoked attack had ?changed him 100 percent? and made him question whether he wanted to carry on with his business. ?You just don?t expect this kind of thing. I do not feel like being around anyone.?

Clearly shaken when discussing the beating, he added: ?Just talking about this makes me sick.

?I?m not going to be happy in my life until the Police catch these guys and prosecute them. But I?m not confident I will see justice served.?

The victim, who has run his business for nearly ten years, said the gang struck just after midnight.

?These guys burst through the door and refused to pay,? he recalled. ?I turned the lights on outside and told the bartender not to serve them because, right away, I could see they were looking for trouble.?

He said the four young men confronted him on their way out after he told them they could not take the drinks, that somebody else had bought for them, outside the venue to Washington Lane.

?Four of them jumped me and one hit me with a bottle across my face and broke my eye socket. That blinded me, basically. Then they all carried on, punching and kicking.

?I had to get plastic surgery ? my nose was broken in three different places. I still have double vision in my left eye and I can?t even drive anymore.?

Asked whether the damage would be permanent, he replied: ?The doctors are not sure. I will have to wait and hang in there.

?I have been in Bermuda for 15 years and nothing like this has ever happened before.?

Mr. Alleyne also slammed the ID parade held a fortnight after the assault.

He said he was taken into a room at Prospect where 13 people were in the line-up. There was no one-way glass ? meaning all those taking part in the parade could see the attack victim.

?They were no more than four feet away,? he recalled. ?I could have touched them. When I walked in there, ten of the guys I knew and they called me by name.?

Recent high-profile shootings at Court Street and outside The Swizzle South Shore remain unsolved. Police Commissioner George Jackson has said that a reluctance of witnesses to violent crime to help the Police has hampered recent inquiries.

And the bar owner yesterday questioned whether witnesses would be willing to take part in the ID process ? if they knew the person they might pick out could see them so clearly.

?People are intimidated. Why won?t people call anonymous phone lines with information? Because they know they are not going to be protected.?

Three members of Spring Garden staff went to the ID parade, he said, but were not reassured by the process.

?Their children have to go to school. They have to go to work.? He said with the recent spate of shootings ?there was no encouragement whatsoever for people to come forward.?

He said he put his concerns about the process to an officer and was told: ?That?s our system.?

Mr. Alleyne, a former cruise ship worker who has travelled the world, added: ?If that?s the case, it?s not working. I don?t think even a Third World country operates like that anymore.

?I do not want to attack the Police, I just want them to get better and change their tactics.?

He said none of his attackers were in the ID line-up he attended. And he was not aware that anyone had been arrested or charged in connection with the incident, which happened on June 18 just after midnight.

Complaints about the ID system have been rumbling on for several years. Back in 1999, the Women?s Resource Centre expressed concerns about a face-to-face process they said put victims at risk and called for one-way glass to be installed.

Three years ago it was reported Police had ordered new video cameras so screens could be used in parades. It is unclear whether they are in use.

Meanwhile, the Spring Garden boss also criticised the immediate Police response to the assault.

?I called them about five minutes before it happened because I could see these guys were looking for trouble. After the beating I told officers where the people had gone. They did not make an effort to pursue these guys.

?They were interested in getting a statement from me but my eye socket was broken and bleeding, I was bleeding inside my mouth and from my nose.?

He said he told Police that night to come to the hospital after he had received treatment. ?I was in there Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and nobody came. I started to make inquiries and was told by an officer at Hamilton Police Station that his computer records said I did not want to make a complaint. I never said such a thing.?

A statement was finally taken on the Wednesday after the Sunday attack ? a delay the bar owner branded ?pathetic?.

Responding to Mr. Alleyne?s criticism, a Bermuda Police Service spokesman yesterday said the force was ?acutely aware? of the case. ?Chief Inspector Anthony Mouchette has been in contact with him and has given him an explanation as it relates to all matters concerning his specific case.? he said.

?We will work with Mr. Alleyne to ensure that his case gets the priority that it deserves.?asked Police whether it was still common policy to conduct ID parades without a one-way partition and if it was, how did the force respond to claims that crime victims were not being protected. We also asked whether any video cameras were in use.

There was no response at the time of going to press last night.

In a recent interview about phasing in of the new Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) implementation manager Mark Crampton spoke of how ID parades should currently be conducted, and how this would change when the modernising legislation starts to be introduced next year.

Currently, said Mr. Crampton, Police round up volunteers who look very similar to the suspect. He said officers look after witnesses to make sure they were not brought into contact with either the volunteers or the suspect. He described the process as ?time consuming?.

A planned new computer-generated ID procedure to be phased in early next year should speed it up and make it less traumatic for both witnesses and victims, he added. Using a database containing 25,000 digital ?faces?, it will end the need for volunteers to appear in a line-up at the Police station. Officers will be able to take the ID parade on a laptop to the victim or witness? home, preventing them confronting a suspect.