Police probe over 15,000 messages and find no infringements

The police revealed yesterday that last October they investigated over 15,000 messages posted on the online forum of the hunters' federation but found no infringements.

The police were reacting to comments by BirdLife Malta about what it termed as threatening posts on the hunters' federation forum. It urged the Police Commissioner to respond to the report it had filed a year ago on the matter.

BirdLife said its report had apparently fallen on deaf ears. To date, it added, the police had not replied to it or to its legal counsel, as it is in duty bound to do, despite its repeated attempts to obtain an update on the investigations.

In the evening, the police said they had, in fact, investigated the matter and arrested two people. One of them was released without any court action being taken against him while the other was charged for possession of illegal material unconnected to the issues raised by BirdLife.

When told about this, BirdLife's executive director Tolga Temuge welcomed the news but wondered why the police had never communicated such information to the organisation's law firm despite several reminders.

Moreover, he highlighted the fact that the organisation had taken issue with the actual content of the posts and not with material that the people posting them had in their possession.

On this point, the police said that, in October last year, another thorough investigation was carried out to establish whether abusive material was being posted on the hunters' federation's forum but no infringements were observed. About 72 pages of postings, totalling 15,057 messages from 2,631 registered members, were investigated.

BirdLife said a message posted recently on the forum by somebody nicknamed breda_2007 referred to its spring watch camp and said: "And their cameras it's better that they keep them away cause if they try to point one at me I'll do like I do to clay pigeons". The next day it said: "There's the plough in my room [at the field] it hasn't been used in a while... it's as big as a bulldozer...I think it will be happy to find something to chew on under its roll..."

When contacted, the secretary of the hunters' federation, Lino Farrugia conceded that some posts contained unacceptable language but said that their moderator "usually removed them".

"There is a lot of anger which is expressed in the forum but we edit the comments we deem unacceptable when we see them," he said, confirming that the organisation does not vet the posts before they are published on the forum, for which they are legally responsible. "If anyone feels libelled they should sue like we do," he said.