Experienced diplomat Antoinette Cutajar.

An experienced diplomat who is fighting her forced transfer from the Foreign Office was not actually a public officer but was employed on a basis of trust under the previous administration, an OPM representative told a court yesterday.

Antoinette Cutajar last week managed to obtain a temporary injunction against the government going ahead with the transfer and she was in court yesterday seeking an order to stop it.

Ms Cutajar, who holds a directorate in political science, was told she would be transferred to a State-owned company, Industrial Projects and Services Ltd, which had been set up to absorb former dockyard workers.

In court yesterday, Leo Bonnici, a representative of the Prime Minister’s Office, said that Dr Cutajar had been employed in 1999 on a temporary basis but she was hired as a person of trust and not through the public selection process.

Her contract was made indefinite in 2008 without the Public Service Commission being consulted on the matter and this was illegal, he said.

In submissions, Dr Cutajar’s lawyer, Karol Aquilina, said she was employed within the Foreign Office and was carrying out duties of a public officer.

In 2007 a European Commission directive was issued requiring all those who had been employed on a year-on-year contractual basis for more than four years to be given an indefinite contract.

The administration at the time applied this to all its employees and did so with Dr Cutajar precisely because she was a public servant.

Lawyer Victoria Buttigieg, from the Attorney General’s Office, said a person who was employed on a basis of trust had to enjoy the confidence of the administration.

Dr Cutajar was handpicked by the minister, not employed through a public call. Madam Justice Edwina Grima is expected to hand down a decision in the coming days.