Police deny BirdLife claim of inaction on website posts

The Police Commissioner this evening denied a claim by BirdLife that no action had been taken after its complaints on comments posted on the website of the hunters' federation.

BirdLife Malta had said it had had no response from the Commissioner to a report it filed a year ago regarding messages posted on the website forum. Nor had there been a reaction to a letter it sent the Commissioner earlier this month.

BirdLife said some of those writing on the hunters’ website were spewing rage and xenophobia, threatening varying degrees of violence and inciting hatred of anyone who dared to disagree with their point of view.

The police in a statement said:

“The Commissioner of Police wishes to reiterate that contrary to what Birdlife Malta contends, the police had immediately commenced investigations, as is in duty bound, to trace culprit/s and eventually initiate court action where it resulted that there was enough evidence to support criminal action in court.

“As a matter of fact during the course of the investigations the administrator of the forum provided the police with the technical information (IP addresses and date and time stamps) which led to two particular persons. These had their private residences searched and subsequently three computers were seized by the Cyber Crime Unit. These persons were arrested and interviewed at length.

“One of the persons had to be released without any court action being taken against him due to the fact that there was no evidence to support any criminal action against him. “The other person was eventually arraigned in Court for being in possession of illegal material which, however, had nothing to do with the allegations made by Birdlife Malta. This case has since been brought before the Court and is still ‘’sub judice’’.

“In October 2007, another thorough investigation was carried out to analyse whether abusive material was being posted on the FKNK forum. However, no infringements of the law were observed. At the time of this investigation the FKNK forum had 72 pages of postings, totalling 15,057 messages, and with 2,631 registered members. During this investigation it was observed that the messages were periodically updated by both the administrator and the members.

“It is to be noted that since March 2007 frequent patrols were carried out by members of the Police Force with the objective of protecting Birdlife members. The Birdlife Malta President had on the 9^th March 2007, also been provided fixed point protection at his residence during the night time. As of the 16^th April 2007, this protection was replaced by very frequent patrols which patrols are still effective to date. During this time no adverse remarks were ever reported.

“One must emphasize that the incident of the three burnt vehicles that occurred last Sunday at the Busketto gardens is being thoroughly investigated by officers from the Criminal Investigations Department. A Magisterial Inquiry is also still in progress.

“Notwithstanding the above, the Police Cyber Crime Unit will continue to monitor the FKNK forum for any infringements of the law.

“As was done in the past, the police will immediately take criminal action against defaulters should any criminal infringements be detected and sufficient evidence be available.”