Update 2: Judicial protest may be filed by Engerer's lawyer over leakage of document

Cyrus Engerer’s lawyer is considering filing a judicial protest against the police and the director general of court tomorrow claiming that the rights of his client to a fair trial had been breached.

Franco Debono said when contacted this afternoon that his clients’ rights were breached when Mr Engerer’s charge sheet was leaked to The Times.

The Times yesterday broke the story that the police had issued a series of charges against Mr Engerer, who is deputy mayor of Sliema.

He is to be charged with keeping and/or circulating pornography and computer misuse and with vilifying Marvic Camilleri, a former employee of the Nationalist Party and a former member of the PN youth movement.

His father Chris was also arrested a few days ago after he was caught smoking a joint and found in possession of five grammes of cannabis.

The news came out just 10 days after Mr Engerer defected from the Nationalist to the Labour party. He had been interrogated by the police a few days before he left the PN.

Police Commissioner John Rizzo claimed yesterday that once the inspector had presented the charges to Court, these were now in the public domain.

But Dr Debono claimed that whoever passed the charge sheet on to the newspaper breached section 518 of the Criminal Code.

This states:

"the acts and documents of the courts of criminal justice shall not be open to inspection, nor shall copies thereof be given, without the special permission of the court, except by or to the Attorney General, by or to the parties concerned or by or to any advocate or legal procurator authorised by such parties; but any act, which is pronounced in open court, shall be open to inspection by any person, and copies thereof may be given on payment of the usual fee".

The action was also in breach of Art 39 (4) (c) (ii) of the Constitution, which states that:

"Nothing in sub-article (3) of this article shall prevent any court or any authority such as is mentioned in that sub-article from excluding from the proceedings persons other than the parties thereto and their legal representatives, where it may be empowered or required by law to do so in the interests of defence, public safety, public order, public morality or decency, the welfare of persons under the age of eighteen years or the protection of the private lives of persons concerned in the proceedings."

This article, Dr Debono said, had to be seen in the context of the powers of the courts of criminal jurisdiction as laid down in section 517 of the criminal code :            

“Every court of criminal justice may, by an order to be signed by the registrar and posted up at the door of the building in which the court  sits , prohibit the publication, before the termination of the proceedings, of any writing, whether printed or not, in respect of the offence to which the proceedings refer, or of the party charged or accused; and any person who fails to comply with the order, shall, for the mere default, be guilty of contempt of the authority of the court, and be liable to punishment as provided in article 686, saving always any other punishment to which the offender may be liable according to law, in respect of any other offence arising from the said writing or from its publication.”

Cyrus Engerer this morning insisted that whoever leaked the information about charges against him by the police wanted to destroy his reputation.