A magistrate yesterday turned down a request made by the leader of the far-right group Imperium Europa, Norman Lowell, and ruled that the case against him could proceed.

Mr Lowell is pleading not guilty to using abusive and insulting words or gestures to incite racial hatred in Rabat on April 30 and in Qawra on May 8.

He is also charged with inciting racial hatred between December 2003 and March 27, 2006 through an article entitled Coming Cataclysmic Crisis, and insulting and denigrating the President of Malta on May 8, 2006.

Mr Lowell's lawyer, Emmy Bezzina, filed a preliminary plea asking the court to declare that the proceedings were null as the citation, in which the charges were listed, was flawed. He argued that the charges related to four separate occasions that had been amalgamated into one case and this was not allowed according to law.

But after evaluating case law, Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera said that this did not make the citation null. She turned down Mr Lowell's request and ordered the continuation of the proceedings against him.

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