The government is not aware of any Islamist threat to Malta but the authorities are being vigilant, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said on TimesTalk this evening.
“We have heard the stories about ships with dangerous people on board approaching Malta. These are all exaggerations. Of course, everything is possible, but we don’t have this information, and it’s not probable,” Dr Muscat said.
The programme discussed the chaos in Libya and whether the unrest could pose a threat to Malta, especially in the wake of the attack on the Corinthia Tripoli. Last week there were claims on social media that a ship carrying terrorists was approaching Malta and the army was on alert. This afternoon an obscure website claimed that Isis elements were threatening to fire rockets towards Spain, Italy and Malta, in that order.
While pointing out that the security services were closely monitoring any potential threat, Dr Muscat warned against fictitious and inflated online rumours that some sort of attack against Malta was imminent.
The rumours last week were fuelled by an internal army decision to upgrade the weapons carried around by soldiers.
Dr Muscat also pointed out in reply to questions that potentially dangerous people did not need to come in boats. "We would be naive if we think [extremist] people come into Malta from North African by boat or direct flights. There are several people who legitimately hold two passports, one from a European country and an Arab country.”
Anybody travelling through a Schengen country would not be subjected to any controls, he said. The upcoming informal EU summit would be discussing more intelligence sharing, he said.
See video clips above and below.
UNLIKELY THAT TERRORISTS WOULD MINGLE WITH MIGRANTS
Ranier Fsadni, one of the guests on the programme, said it was unlikely that an extremist or a terrorist would come to Malta on migrants' boats.
That, he said, made no sense because Malta had a detention policy and migrants could be held in detention for up to 18 months.
MALTESE BUSINESSES IN LIBYA LOSING SOME €120m PER YEAR
The vice-president of the GRTU, Mario Debono, said Maltese businesses in Libya were suffering some €120 million in lost business every year.
He said that apart from the Corinthia, Maltese in Libya had small hotels and provided a range of other services. Exports were in the region of €60m to €80 million.
He said many Maltese businesses had managed to survive the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi because it was relatively short, but the current unrest was more drawn out and big cities such as Tripoli were at a standstill.
Mr Debono ran a business in Libya for several years until having had to come to Malta because of the unrest.
He said that returning to Malta despite having a business in Libya was a difficult decision, and many Maltese had lost businesses in Libya.
He said that the government needed to give more help to these businesses, particularly by urging the banks in Malta to be more flexible.