A photographer was taken to a police station for questioning after taking a picture of former Siggiewi mayor Robert Musumeci talking to a Malta Environment and Planning Authority board member in a car park.

Graham Cooper, a British national who is a former press photographer, attended a Mepa board hearing to object to the demolition of a building next to his Floriana home.

According to Mr Graham and other witnesses, Mr Musumeci, an architect, entered the room to speak to the developers' architects while the permit application was being discussed.

After the meeting, he was then seen talking to Claude Borg, one of the board members deciding on the application, in the authority's car park. Mr Cooper said he instinctively took a photo of the two men with the camera that he always carries with him.

Although the photo only shows the two men standing in the car park facing the camera, the police turned up at Mr Cooper's home the following day to follow up a complaint. He said he was asked to bring his camera with him and was driven to the police station in Valletta to be interviewed.

The complaint had been filed by Mr Musumeci, who felt he was harassed by the fact that Mr Cooper was taking pictures of him and the board member.

When contacted, Mr Musumeci said he felt his privacy was being invaded because a stranger was taking photos of him for no reason.

"He was in my face, invading my territory. I just asked the police to look into it and see why he was taking these photos. Basically I asked for protection from the State - this had nothing to do with data protection."

He said that he was doing nothing secretive or unethical and challenged Mr Cooper to prove otherwise.

Mr Musumeci added that if the photographer had been a member of the press, he would have had no problem with the photo. But since he did not know who he was, he feared that he might have had malicious intent and therefore asked for the issue to be investigated.

Yet the police did not bring up harassment issues when explaining why they had taken Mr Cooper to the station. Instead, the inspector interviewing him brought up the Data Protection Act.

Mr Cooper was asked for the picture but it had already been downloaded onto a computer, so the inspector asked that the picture be deleted after it would have been sent to him via e-mail.

Mr Cooper insisted that he was in a public place and had broken no laws and sent the picture as requested after he was released, but did not delete it.

The police were asked to explain why they had picked up Mr Cooper, but no response was forthcoming by the time this paper went to print.

Lawyers who spoke to The Sunday Times about the case agreed that Mr Cooper should not have been asked to delete the picture.

They said that since the two were in a public place, and since the photo was not incriminating, the police should never have got involved.

One of the lawyers said: "It cannot be a crime for someone to take a photo in a public place. That means that every time you take a photo of a landscape or a building, you might be committing a crime because there might be someone who doesn't want to be photographed. It's absurd."

The Data Protection Act does not make specific mention of photographs. Personal data are defined as "information relating to an identifiable person", and sensitive personal data as "personal data that reveals race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, membership of a trade union, health or sex life." When contacted, the new Data Protection Commissioner, Joseph Ebejer, said he would not comment on individual cases.

cperegin@timesofmalta.com