The Constitutional Court has dismissed a request by the producers of the banned play Stitching to exhibit the scripts of two other plays that had been approved by the same censorship board that blocked theirs.

The Acting President of the Constitutional Court, Albert J. Magri, Mr Justice Geoffrey Valenzia and Mr Justice Tonio Mallia heard the case.

In 2009, the theatre company, Unifaun filed a constitutional application against the censorship board, the Prime Minister, the Police Commissioner and the Attorney General claiming the banning of Stitching was in breach of freedom of expression.

In the course of the proceedings, the complainants attempted to file the scripts of Immaculate, an irreverent comedy that deals with religion and relationships in which the main character finds herself pregnant despite being celibate for a year, and Osama The Hero, in which a teenager is vilified for penning a school project on Osama Bin Laden. Both plays had been approved by the Maltese censors, the theatre company said. This, the producers argued, showed they had been discriminated against.

The authorities contested the exhibition of the scripts on the basis that the original constitutional application was based on violation of freedom of expression and not on discrimination.

The Constitutional Court ruled that the documents could not be exhibited at this stage of the proceedings because they were aimed at changing the grounds on which the case was being examined.