Updated: Cyrus Engerer files judicial protest

A judicial protest against the Police Commissioner, the director general of the Law Courts and the director of the Criminal Courts was filed by Cyrus Engerer's legal counsel Franco Debono this morning.

Mr Engerer is holding the commissioner and the directors responsible for any damages he may have suffered following the leak of a citation document published in the media.

The Times on Tuesday 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.

In his protest, signed by Dr Debono, Mr Engerer is arguing that apart from the fact that the court document had just been filed in the court registry when it was leaked, he had not been informed that charges against him had been filed.

He says that according to the Criminal Code, a court document is only public after it has been read out in a court room.

This had not happened in this case.

Apart from that, the same law also allowed the possibility of such a case as his to have been heard with a ban on the identity of the people involved.

The law allowed such bans in cases where public morals may be offended or when a person private life was at stake, among other reasons.

Dr Debono filed the protest in his client's presence.

Speaking to the media after filing the protest, Dr Debono said that when he asked to see the document at the Magistrate's Court where the criminal case was assigned to be heard, the magistrate did not allow him to see the document automatically since, technically, it was not yet public.

He said the magistrate asked him to file a formal application or to be in the presence of Mr Engerer, before he could see it.

When asked if he still managed to see the document in spite of this, he did not reply.