For reasons of space I cannot take issue with every point raised by Victor J. de Bono in his justification for the deportation of Maltese citizens during WWII (Characters To Forget, January 11). Allow me to just pick and choose, starting from his conclusion.

The internees, or those who defend them, according to Mr de Bono, "are an embarrassment to Malta and to the Maltese". Now what gives Mr de Bono any authority to speak on behalf of the Maltese nation? May I remind Mr de Bono that a democratically elected Maltese government, the legitimate representative of the Maltese people, erected a beautiful marble monument to the internees. This internees memorial makes sure that two things will never be forgotten: their barbaric ordeal and the eternal shame of those who support it.

Successive democratically elected governments proudly named roads, gardens, schools and public squares after leading internees like Enrico Mizzi, Herbert Ganado, Sir Arturo Mercieca and Vincenzo Bonello, to further honour their honoured memories (characters to forget?). Dom Mintoff and George Borg Olivier (who together came to represent virtually all the Maltese nation), agreed in calling Enrico Mizzi, leader of the internees, "the greatest of all Maltese".

If Mr de Bono enjoys advertising himself as a political dinosaur, cut off from the Maltese nation which has glorified the internees, fine, let him by all means. But will he please do it solo, in the name of some faux-British leftover from Lincolnshire, and never in the hallowed name of the Maltese people?

Mr de Bono calls the deportation saga "a shabby part of our history". For the wrong reasons, he is right. That is exactly how British historians see it - a disgraceful colonialist abuse. Stewart Perowne, a historian with a superior knowledge of Maltese imperial history, writing after the war, calls the internees "victims ... admired citizens and ornaments of the international society of contemporary Malta".

Mr Perowne adds that "they were honest men with convictions, and it was those convictions which convicted them". He slams their internment and deportation as "a sad story... a shabby affair". But Mr Perowne was a fair, competent, informed historian. Not one of these four descriptions unfortunately fits Mr de Bono. Should Mr Perowne also have been indicted for treason?

Mr de Bono has the gall to plead with me: Mrs Xuereb, get your historical facts right. Now isn't that rich from a person who lumps Mgr Dandria with the internees (he had already been dead eight years before the war started), who mixes the defence regulations with the war regulations, who thinks that the integration-with-Britain proposal fell through because it was "vetoed" by Archbishop Michael Gonzi and who still believes the fable that "our Maltese forefathers requested that Malta be put under the protection of His Britannic Majesty". Sadly, the difference between knowledge and ignorance is that knowledge has some limits.

Let me make this clear. Contrarily to what Mr de Bono believes, neither I nor my ancestors were anti-British. We proudly were, and are, anti-Colonialist. Our ample respect for the great British people is only matched by our affection. We deem them as noble as we deem their lackeys ignoble. But, it seems the distinction between being anti-British and being anti-Colonialist fatigues unduly Mr de Bono's mental faculties, such as they are, and I will, in charity, change the subject.

So what is the justification pleaded by Mr de Bono for the massive and serial violations of human rights inflicted on the internees? Arrested without ever being informed why? Detained without any charge? Imprisoned without a whiff of due process? Deported from their native country against all dictates of international law? Kept for years in foreign concentration camps despite a supreme court judgement declaring that unconstitutional? Sure, applauds Mr de Bono. Those were times of war and fundamental rights ("niceties" according to him) mean nothing in times of war.

If he is joking, it is serious; if he is serious, he's a joke. Respect for human rights, if anything, becomes more urgent and compelling in times of war. Perhaps Mr de Bono would care to have a look at the very opening of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind". Of mankind, yes, but not of our man in Lincolnshire. I will check if they can spare an extra copy in the Lincolnshire lending library.

He is not shy of his "disregard and contempt" for these trivial "niceties" in times of war. He is in good company. Those who advocated the disregard of fundamental human rights in times of conflict, which led to the horrors of ethnic cleansings, concentration camps, witch hunts, the Inquisition, Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, all did it waving the flag of national security. Some just love to broadcast their moral bankruptcy; worse than that, their immoral stupidity. Mr de Bono is free to choose the company he keeps. Will he excuse me if I look for mine elsewhere?

What Mr de Bono glibly dismisses as "legal niceties", the rest of the world condemns as crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Charter, the basic bible of minimum standards of behaviour during war, stigmatises the deportations of civilians in wartime not merely as a violation of human rights but as a crime against humanity. That probably explains why Britain refrained from deporting one single British-born internee, however militant his support for Hitler had been. But crimes against mere colonial natives were a different matter altogether. There are still a few who applaud the commission of crimes against humanity.

I find Mr de Bono's assertions highly amusing: "the very Fascists some members of the Nationalist party emulated... these same people could have corroborated (I guess he meant "collaborated") with the enemy..." Now, does he have one tiny shred of evidence to justify his collaboration-with-the-enemy dysfunction? Maybe he is privy to secrets the secret services were unaware of? Or which were studiously kept from Governor Bonham-Carter?

Let me remind Mr de Bono that British spies had infiltrated everywhere, that those eventually interned had had their correspondence slyly opened, their phone calls listened to, all their papers confiscated in sudden raids, their movements furtively recorded and photographed. Yet, all this frenzied intelligence activity failed to unearth one smear of treason.

As Mr de Bono well knows, every time the security services came up with any sliver of evidence of treason or sedition, before, during or after the war, they always and rightly prosecuted the culprit. Many (not this Mr de Bono) will draw their own conclusions as to what evidence the authorities held against the internees; differently from others, not one was ever prosecuted for any misdeeds at all.

This total deficit of evidence is of piddling importance to Mr de Bono. Evidence? Like human rights, niceties, expendable niceties. Of course, the internees must have been traitors - take that on the strength of Mr de Bono's I-tell-you-so. This self-sufficiency may do a lot for his ego, but very little for his argument.

All in all I find Mr de Bono quite endearing - his blissful divorce from history, his nostalgia for a very deceased empire, his remoteness from the conscience of mankind, his collection of fossils any natural history museum would envy. The likes of him should be protected with as much care as any species on the verge of extinction. And, the moment a vacancy occurs in Triq l-Internati, he should consider retiring there.