A 21-year-old history student is likely to be arraigned for publishing a crude short story in Maltese dealing with adult themes of sexual violence in a newspaper that was subsequently banned at the University.

Mark Camilleri, editor of Realtà, was on Thursday interviewed by the police who told him they would probably be pursuing the case in court. The police did not tell him what charges would be brought against him but pointed out that it was illegal to publish obscenities, he said yesterday.

Mr Camilleri said he would probably go all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if it came to that because this was a violation of fundamental human rights and he intended to use all legal means possible to make his point.

The police at first denied that Mr Camilleri had been "interrogated" by them and even that he had been told by the police inspector that he was likely to be arraigned.

After being confronted with Mr Camilleri's version of events, they, however, accepted that he was summoned to the police station briefly and told he would probably be arraigned.

The fictional short-story was written by Alex Vella Gera, a 36-year-old author who lives in Brussels and has already had two novels published.

University Rector Juanito Camilleri filed a police report about the small bilingual student newspaper, which is known for its radical left-wing stand, after the story was brought to his attention by University Chaplain Michael Bugeja.

Mr Vella Gera said he chose to have the story published at University because he expected that the readers would be mature and intelligent enough to get the message behind the story: the pathetic mentality of some men who see women as objects.

Press bodies slam ban

The Institute of Maltese Journalists (IĠM), the Journalists' Committee and the Malta Youth Press have come out against the ban.

The Journalists' Committee said the ban revealed "the confessional shift in Maltese politics" because the police were being made to intervene on "offensive" literature despite the fact that freedom of expression included the freedom to offend.

"If Realtà's editor and the author of the short story are charged in court, this will be a blow for freedom of expression in Malta."

A spokesman for the Journalists' Committee said that if the University rector believed "obscene" material should not be read by University students this was a "patronising" attitude that the Education Minister should be looking into. "At this rate, why not ban Bret Easton Ellis and Irvine Welsh books for the obscenities they write about?"

A spokesman for the Malta Youth Press, which is part of the IĠM, said there was no way the newspaper should have been banned or censored, especially since this was an independent publication and that the short story was literature, not news.

"I just think they should have put a disclaimer on the front page to warn about the language used. But, anyway, it shouldn't have been censored," Keith Demicoli, the president, said.

"We strongly believe that freedom of expression and speech should prevail," he said, adding "that being said, I am not keen on reading such literature and I find it low."

In its statement the University said that if the University authorities were told about the newspaper before it was distributed, they would have had the chance to check the legal implications and make necessary arrangements for the paper to be "made available in some other, less generalised, manner".

A warning should have been published on the front page of the paper saying that it contained adult material, the University said, arguing that the campus is also frequented by families and that at Junior College (where they said the paper was also distributed) the students are minors.

However, the newspaper editor Mark Camilleri argued that to his knowledge he was not legally bound to put such a warning because the University has a mature readership.

He also denied that the newspaper was officially distributed at Junior College. "But we could not stop people from doing so and have no responsibility in this regard."

The story comes in the wake of several other censorship controversies, including a banned play and a recent police request to a shop owner to clothe nude mannequins in his shop window that were part of an installation against sex trafficking.