A magistrate has again called for the abolition of criminal libel laws, just months after he asked the Constitutional Court to decide whether this legal avenue stifled freedom of expression.
Magistrate Francesco Depasquale dedicated a large part of a criminal libel judgment to what he called the “ambivalent situation” created by the continued existence of criminal libel in Malta, which carries an effective prison term.
He was ruling in a criminal case filed by former Illum editor Julia Farrugia against columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia over a number of blogs she claimed were libellous. Earlier this week, a civil libel case Ms Farrugia had filed over the same blogs was upheld and she was awarded €3,000 in compensation.The criminal case was, however, thrown out because of a missing criminal complaint – which is needed for such a case.
The magistrate had already expressed his views in previous judgments, including when he referred the matter to the Constitutional Court to deem whether simultaneous civil and criminal libel suits breached the human right to freedom of expression.
In this decision, the magistrate quoted a number of European institutions, including the Council of Europe’s ministerial committee and a report by the OSCE Representative on the freedom of the media.
The latter had declared that “criminal defamation laws should be abolished and replaced, where necessary, with appropriate civil defamation laws”. The same principle was expressed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights which in 1999 held that “sanctions for defamation should not be so large as to exert a chilling effect on freedom of expression and the right to seek, receive and impart information; penal sanctions, in particular imprisonment, should never be applied.”
Magistrate Depasquale called on Parliament to “seriously consider” these declarations and embrace them by amending laws that still accepted criminal libels.
Meanwhile, in a separate sitting, Ms Caruana Galizia touched upon the subject of criminal libel laws while testifying during a libel case filed against her by Malta Today editor Saviour Balzan.
She said the law needed to be changed and stressed that journalists attacking other journalists was counterproductive, as journalists should stick together for this aim.