It appears that whoever penned or edited the article Ruling May Sink Fresh Charges and Charges May Be Double Jeopardy (May 12) might have thought the article could be made more intriguing if a number of statements which I never made were to be attributed to me.

For example the statements to the effect that: “The Attorney General has said fresh charges will be filed against three police officers” and “following a public outcry as well as stern words from President George Abela – that the people who made the mistake should bear responsibility for it – the Attorney General declared that he would be filing fresh charges in the case” and “he argued that this would not be a case of trying someone twice for the same crime” are insofar as they attribute statements to me, completely made up.

It seems that the margin or error allowed to journalists by the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights for the purpose of protecting freedom of expression was, to say the least, fully availed of in this case and, I must admit, the made up part of the story still looked credible. As regards the legal argument on “double jeopardy” in the article, it is rather surprising that nothing was said of the fact that the judgment of the Civil Court First Hall (Constitutional Jurisdiction) of March 26, 2009 (Mr Justice Micallef) in the Magrin case – on which the thrust of the article was based – is not only still subject to appeal before the Constitutional Court but also conflicts with a previous judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal of March 17, 2008 (Mr Justice Galea Debono) delivered in the same proceedings.

In the circumstances the situation is a far cry from settled law and the writer’s use of the word “may” twice in the article’s headlines is perhaps his most commendable contribution to the understanding of the issues involved.

Editorial Note: The Times regrets the error, which lay in attributing the intention to file fresh charges to the Attorney General instead of to the police. This was corrected in subsequent stories.