BBC journalist and bird conservation activist Chris Packham is expected to grace Gozo's courthouse tomorrow to face charges that he assaulted two trappers.
In a video posted to Twitter early on Tuesday morning, Mr Packham said he had been kept at a police station in Gozo for two hours and issued a court summons for 9am on Thursday morning.
"Two trappers...claimed that I'd assaulted them," Mr Packham said in the video, with Victoria police station in the background. "I've been charged with using force against any person with the intention to insult or hurt them. I'm completely innocent of these charges."
As he faced the camera lens, the journalist went on to claim that a policeman at the scene had pushed him "all the way up the street".
"Malta!" he wrote in the tweet accompanying the video. "You point out suspected criminals to the police . . . and you end up in court!"
WATCH: Packham reflects on Malta following the spring hunting referendum
In a subsequent tweet in which he tagged Animal Rights parliamentary secretary Roderick Galdes and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Mr Packham asked what had been done with the two trappers involved in the altercation. "Probably nothing," he fumed.
The original tweet and video had been retweeted almost 1,000 times by Wednesday morning. The police have been contacted for comment.
Mr Packham has actively worked to expose poachers and illegal trappers in Malta and Gozo for several years, sparking controversy some years back for a documentary series titled Massacre on Migration.
The BBC journalist is no stranger to local law enforcement, having spent several hours in police custody back in 2014. On that occasion, his detention by police had sparked a Twitter storm, with #freechrispackham trending and local bird activists raising €50,000 in just a few hours.
Mr Packham has previously said that he does not advocate boycotting Malta as a sign of protest against its hunting and trapping practices, though that message appears to have not filtered through to many of his followers.
Others used the occasion to vent some of their other Malta-related grievances.
While a lone voice among the crowd suggested that the BBC journalist was seeking to impose his views on others.
FKNK COMPLAINS OF NEO-COLONIALIST ATTITUDE
The FKNK hunters' federation said Mr Packham, and other 'tourists' like him, needed to understand that their neo-colonialist behaviour no longer had a place in the modern world. In Malta, we have adequate laws and advanced control systems, as well as a judicial system that deals with one-and-all equally under the law and is not influenced by the media.
"In Malta, we have adequate laws and advanced control systems, as well as a judicial system that deals with one-and-all equally under the law and is not influenced by the media," it said.
It accused Packham of disrespect for Malta and all that is Maltese and praised the police for their conduct.