Norman Lowell is the 'religion' of the people behind the website Viva Malta, where harsh, cruel and frightening comments are submitted by his followers, columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia said in court this morning.

She was being cross examined by lawyer Claire Bonello, who is appearing for Arlette Baldacchino in a libel case she instituted against the columnist in 2006 for an article in The Malta Independent entitled “What is a nice girl like that doing there?”

Mrs Caruana Galizia said that she was shocked when she saw Ms Baldacchino with Norman Lowell since she knew Ms Baldacchino at school as a sweet girl with the right sentiments. Since then they had not really met.

She said that Ms Baldacchino moderated the Viva Malta site under the nickname Etoile Noir and appeared with Norman Lowell in The Times in an article after he was convicted of inciting racial hatred and handed down a suspended sentence.

Asked whether she knew that comments on Viva Malta had been changed by a hacker, Mrs Caruana Galizia said she would not know if they were or not.

Asked if she ever saw comments by Catherine Camilleri, a lawyer whose car had been set on fire, Mrs Caruana Galizia said she did not because at that time she had worse things to deal with because her own house had been attacked.

She said the article she wrote was about the racist sentiments of Ms Baldacchino and Mr Lowell.

As for hacking, if there were any hacking attempts in her case, the service provider would let her know but all attempts were unsuccessful because there was a firewall.

Ms Caruana Galizia said that nobody was crazy enough to go into a site to start changing individual comments. Hackers hacked into a site to crash it.

Mrs Caruana Galizia was also asked how she had concluded that Viva Malta was predominantly about Norman Lowell.

“Because it gives prominence to his philosophy, if you can call it that. If Norman Lowell didn’t exist, it probably wouldn’t exist either,” she said.

Dr Bonello said that a certain person on the website, called Marco Polo had submitted 14,000 posts, Norman Lowell’s people submitted 5,000 and other comments amounted to 9,000.

She asked Mrs Caruana Galizia if she still insisted that Mr Lowell was the focus of this group.

“Norman Lowell is their religion,” she answered, adding that there were two websites - Imperium Europa and Viva Malta, the latter being a forum for discussion. Marco Polo, Mrs Caruana Galizia said, was one of the people who had been investigated in the burning of her house.

The case continues in October.