‘Investigative journalism is a corrupt politician's worst nightmare,’ lawyer says in Cutajar harassment case

The magistrate presiding the criminal case against author Mark Camilleri who is accused of harassing or threatening MP Rosianne Cutajar heard the lawyers for both Camilleri and Cutajar make their final submissions this morning.

The MP had asked the police to take action against Camilleri, the author of A Rent Seeker’s Paradise - a book chronicling government corruption, in which Cutajar features prominently, claiming he had repeatedly insulted her online and had threatened her in a Facebook post, where he promised to be her “worst nightmare.”

Cutajar resigned from the Labour Party’s parliamentary group in April, having previously been removed from her position as a parliamentary secretary during the last legislature in the wake of the Standards Commissioner’s finding that she had committed an ethics breach, by brokering a property deal for Yorgen Fenech, the man indicted over the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Magistrate Simone Grech noted that neither party had filed written submissions, despite having been given the faculty to do so.

Police Inspector Marcus Cachia, prosecuting, informed the court that he was deferring his submissions to Cutajar’s lawyer Edward Gatt.

“This whole saga and all this delay is about a contravention, one of the least serious possible, at that” Gatt told the court on Wednesday.

The court need not look too deep into police testimony from cybercrime, said the lawyer, because the defendant had chosen to take the witness stand and had “assumed responsibility for the threat and attempted to justify it.”

“Let us try to understand if a threat can ever be justified….She filed a court case to protect her civil rights and the defendant took it to give him a fiat to do as he pleased.”

“A journalist has an obligation to reveal things,” Gatt said, “but he also said that he wants to ‘destroy’ her because the police didn’t take action [on his reports]. 

“There was also blackmail,” the lawyer went on, quoting Camilleri as writing “if you don’t withdraw your libel, I will become your worst nightmare.”

All the court had to do in this case was to evaluate whether what Camilleri wrote constituted a threat, Cutajar’s lawyer said, stressing that threats need not speak of violence.

“The punishment for this contravention, even at maximum, is almost symbolic,” Gatt went on. “What my client is after is that if guilt is found, there would be protection…some form of restraining order.“

In his reply, Camilleri’s lawyer Joseph Mizzi reminded the court of the background to the case. Cutajar had posted first and Camilleri had reacted through another post. “He was charged under 339P. - making insults and threats not mentioned elsewhere in the Criminal code, even if provoked.”

Mizzi remarked that it was unusual for a court to be faced with a solitary charge of this contravention. “It is possibly the first time,” he said.

The lawyer argued that it was clear in this case that Camilleri had been provoked by Cutajar’s post about filing a libel. “His reaction was proportionate,” said the lawyer. 

“In fact he is saying that he will end the political life of the individual. We have an investigative journalist saying that he will be her worst nightmare. This means that the journalist will investigate a politician in order for justice to be done.”

Camilleri had subsequently posted that he would make her resign, and resign she did, said the lawyer.

“An investigative journalist is in fact the worst nightmare of the corrupt politician,” Mizzi submitted, to Cutajar’s visible consternation.

In order for a threat to be real, the prospect of damage or violence must be coming from a person with the capacity and propensity to do so, he said. Camilleri had in fact written that he did not intend his post to be interpreted as being about violence, he said, “because justice is what these people are most afraid of.”

The defence lawyer highlighted the defendant’s non-violent character. “You have a person who is a journalist and a writer with no history of criminality or violence. Had the police wanted to prove this they would have exhibited a criminal record full of convictions for violent crime.”

Additionally, Mizzi said, case law had established that the contravention with which Camilleri is charged, dealt with interpersonal communication between two people and not through public means. As they had been published on Facebook, there was no physical meeting between the two, said the lawyer, adding that Cutajar and Camilleri had only met once, years before the incident, and had shaken hands.

“A journalist should feel free to write and do his job to ensure politicians behave to a high standard,” Mizzi submitted. “This is what he meant. If we are going to restrict how journalists write, we will be damaging the fourth pillar of society.”

“This case is nothing but abuse of power, because the police are acting as a political puppet,” argued the lawyer, as Gatt interrupted him.

Mizzi continued, however, explaining that Cutajar had said that she wanted anyone who makes threats to face the repercussions. To protestations from Cutajar’s lawyers, Mizzi compared the police’s immediate and comprehensive response to Cutajar’s complaint to their relative inaction in the face of death threats reported by Bernice Camilleri, who was subsequently murdered by her partner. 

At that point, Cutajar stood up and shouted “jikser id-divjetti tal-Qorti!” (“He breaches court-imposed publication bans”) gesticulating towards the defendant. The court ordered her to be quiet and sit down.

“This is only intended to put pressure on Camilleri,” the defence lawyer went on. “The message the court should give is that the police are not to be misused by politicians to stifle dissent.”

Asked by the court whether he wished to say anything to this, Gatt sarcastically asked “perhaps a round of applause?”

Although the court offered to adjourn the case for judgement to next month, it had to be given a date in January due to Camilleri’s commitments abroad.

Police Inspector Marcus Cachia is prosecuting. Lawyer Joseph Mizzi is defence counsel to Mark Camilleri. Lawyers Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo are appearing for Rosianne Cutajar.