Anti-divorce protagonists deny leaking e-mails

Members of the anti-divorce movement’s strategy group yesterday denied leaking a private exchange of e-mails and insisted the correspondence was stolen and given to the Labour media.

Andrè Camilleri, Fr Joe Borg, Ray Baldacchino, Lawrence Zammit and Arthur Galea Salomone “categorically deny that the e-mails, published by It-Torċa, were leaked by any of us”.

The denial was made after Labour leader Joseph Muscat claimed on Tuesday’s programme of Bondìplus that the e-mails had been leaked to It-Torċa.

The correspondence referred to an exchange of e-mails, during the divorce referendum campaign earlier this year, in which Fr Borg, a media studies lecturer, suggested parish chaplains forward a list of separated couples and children of broken marriages to “speak intelligently” against a law on divorce. Later, Fr Borg said it was important to give a voice to the “more vulnerable” for their views on the proposed divorce legislation.

The five members of the strategy group, which was dissolved after the referendum, insisted that the “e-mails, which were our private property, were stolen in an illicit manner and ended up being published by It-Torċa and MaltaToday and broadcast by One TV and One Radio”.

They urged Dr Muscat to pass on to the police “any information he may have as to how stolen e-mails ended up in the hands of It-Torċa, One TV and One Radio”.

This follows a similar incident in which both Dr Muscat and Church radio station journalist Sabrina Agius claimed that e-mails that had exchanged were hacked and eventually published by the Nationalist Party’s media.

Dr Muscat also raised the matter in Parliament and Ms Agius have asked the police to investigate.

Dr Muscat said neither he nor Ms Agius had released the correspondence.