Mr Justice Giannino Caruana Demajo, sitting in the First Hall of the Civil Court, yesterday awarded Alfred Attard Lm400 libel damages.

Attard felt libelled by an article written by John Vella and published in l-orizzont on July 24, 1999 under the heading "Vittmi ta` loghba politika" (Victims of a political game).

The article referred to Attard`s actions when he was member of Cospicua local council.

The court noted that the article alleged that when Attard was a local councillor he had quarrelled with everyone and had been expelled from the council as he had betrayed both the council and the electorate. The article had also alleged that Attard had followed the example of politicians such as Hitler and Mussolini.

These were allegations of fact and the court pointed out that Vella had failed to produce any evidence in support of the allegations made. Furthermore, the allegations were of their very nature libellous.

Mr Justice Caruana Demajo thus ordered Vella to pay Attard Lm400 libel damages.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.