Former EU Commissioner John Dalli has submitted a declaration in court stating that when he spoke about a coordinated attack against him in Richard Cachia Caruana’s libel case against Saviour Balzan he had been referring to a series of articles in the media.

In his declaration referring to Richard Cachia Caruana’s libel against MaltaToday managing editor Saviour Balzan, Mr Dalli said he had been called to give his testimony on June 27.

During the counter-examination on October 6, lawyer Joseph Zammit Maempel exhibited an article in The Times of July 25 and insisted that this was the only one he could find in which then journalist Steve Mallia had written about him in the contest of a fraud case against him in 2004, both before and after July 4, when he was made to resign by then Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.

Dr Zammit Maempel had pointed out to Mr Dalli the only article about Joe Zahra published by Mr Mallia appeared three weeks after Mr Dalli’s resignation and it had made no reference to him; this article, in fact, stated that a private investigator (later identified as Joe Zahra) was expected to be prosecuted and included a comment from the Prime Minister’s spokesman that confirmed that allegations made in the report were unfounded.

But Mr Dalli claimed that following a brief search in Times of Malta digital archives for June and July 2004, he found more than 50 articles, five of them by Mr Mallia.

At the same time there was an article in The Malta Independent and a news bulletin on PBS during which a report which had appeared in The Times was read in at least one instance. There was also an attack by Lou Bondi.

Mr Dalli said that this was what he was referring to when he spoke about a coordinated attack against him.

He said he would elaborate more when he was called again by the court to continue giving his testimony.