Labour MEP John Attard Montalto, once a confidant of Dom Mintoff, has revealed the former Prime Minister was discussing his autobiography with a Japanese publisher and planned to visit Tokyo to discuss the contract.
I am not doing this for publicity; I don’t need it
Speaking to The Times, Dr Attard Montalto said Mr Mintoff had asked him to negotiate the contract as he wanted to retain the rights to the Maltese version of the book.
“Although already in his 80s, he wanted me to accompany him to Japan,” Dr Attard Montalto said.
This is the latest in a series of revelations made by the lawyer who was close to Mr Mintoff, particularly between 1987 and 1996.
Dr Attard Montalto also stuck to his version of what Mr Mintoff had told him during private conversations: that he had once been violently threatened by Libya’s then number two Abdesalam Jalloud and the then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had wanted him to act as an intermediary to buy a nuclear submarine.
Dr Attard Montalto said that despite the scepticism expressed by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Mr Mintoff’s private secretary Joe Camilleri, who were both unaware of these claims, he was prepared to repeat under oath what he had written in The Times.
“I am not doing this for publicity; I don’t need it,” he said.
“What I wrote was with a deep sense of the privilege of having known Mintoff. I can vouch under oath that what I’ve written is the truth as recounted by Mintoff himself.
“Although I hold both Dr Mifsud Bonnici and Mr Camilleri in high esteem, their scepticism about what I wrote will not change this.”
Dr Attard Montalto, who only got to know Mr Mintoff personally in 1987 – when the latter was already out of office – used to meet him practically every day until 1996, often for a winter swim at St Peter’s Pool in Delimara.
“Of course, I was not his only friend or confidant,” he said.
“However, from 1987 I was one of them and we used to have very long discussions about contemporary history and politics.”
Dr Attard Montalto had also revealed during a television programme that Mr Mintoff had wanted to try and buy the Archbishop’s Curia in Floriana and convert it to become the Labour Party headquarters. The former Labour minister yesterday also insisted this story was true.
In 1984, Labour thugs had ransacked the Curia, just a few metres across from the police headquarters, during a spontaneous demonstration by Dockyard workers.