A court has thrown out a criminal libel case filed by former Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia and Labour Party election candidate David Farrugia Sacco against former Nationalist Party general secretary Paul Borg Olivier.

Magistrate Josette Demicoli ruled that Dr Borg Olivier should not have been the person against whom the complaint was filed.

The libel proceedings were filed during the election campaign and revolved around two articles run by PN news website maltarightnow.com which, Dr Mallia and Dr Farrugia Sacco claimed, linked them to the oil procurement scandal.

From the evidence presented in court, it emerged that the articles were penned by journalist Matthew Bonett, who worked with Media Link Communications Company Limited. However, the pieces did not, at the time, carry a by-line indicating who the writer was.

The defence argued that one could easily deduce who the writer was from the clips broadcast during Net News and since there were only two PN journalists who were following the press conferences.

At the time, the news portal maltarightnow.com did not have a registered editor. The court needed to decide whether the accused qualified as the person responsible for the articles’ publication since he was neither author nor editor.

At the time, Dr Borg Olivier was the PN’s secretary general as well as the executive head of Media Link Communications Company Limited.

The court deemed the accused to be the person responsible for publication since the articles’ content were in the hands of the PN.

However, the court noted, the law stated that the person responsible for publication should only be arraigned if neither the author nor the editor was identifiable. In this case, the author could easily be traced, especially since in the news clip covering the press conferences in question, Mr Bonett had signed off using his name.

The court therefore acquitted Dr Borg Olivier because he should not have been the one arraigned in court.

Lawyer Joe Spiteri Maempel appeared for the accused.