On September 11, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, took me to task before the Committee of Ministers’ Deputies (ambassadors). He never did so when I was a member, though our views sometimes diverged.

Jagland distributed speaking notes referring to his letter: “To the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Malta, George Vella. The reason for the letter was recent public statements by the former Permanent Representative of Malta to the Council of Europe, Ambassador Licari, in which he questioned the integrity and impartiality of the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, and the European Court of Human Rights, as well as its staff.”

Mr Jagland was officially informed that my term as Permanent Representative ended on July 31. I know only what was reported in the press about the letters exchanged, but if Vella told Jagland that I now write and speak in my personal capacity, and not on the Government’s behalf, he stated a fact.

I did not question the integrity and impartiality of the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights. In my article ‘No kangaroo court in Strasbourg’ (The Sunday Times of Malta, August 25) I quoted from the Government’s reply to the Commissioner’s report: “The Government respects the Commissioner’s independence but regrets his bias.” That reply has been on the Council of Europe’s website (www.coe.int) since June 2011.

I did not question the integrity and impartiality of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT). I quoted from the Government’s reply which, referring to riots in the detention centres, says: “The accounts of and comments on the incidents in the CPT reports are unashamedly biased.” Speaking to the press in Malta on June 17, Jagland himself had called for the publication of the report and the response. He got what he wished for on July 4.

As regards the European Court of Human Rights, I stand by what I said and wrote but not by what others tried to put in my mouth. For example, Michael O’Boyle, the court’s deputy registrar, wrote that I had taken “the liberty of accusing the Registry’s Maltese lawyer … of conspiring with NGOs”, (See ‘Unjustified attack on ECHR’, The Sunday Times of Malta, September 8). I never used the terms “accuse”, “Maltese lawyer” and “conspire”. O’Boyle did.

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