Far-rightist Lowell dubs magistrate ‘ass’

Far-rightist Norman Lowell has branded a magistrate “an ass” for throwing out his defamation claim against MaltaToday.

Lowell lost the defamation suit he filed in 2006 against managing editor Saviour Balzan and journalist Matthew Vella over a series of reports on the aftermath of an arson attack on the house of Malta Independent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

“The magistrate has made an ass of himself,” Lowell said in his first reaction posted on VivaMalta.net, the internet forum for his adherents. “He is to be pitied – he has been promoted to his level of incompetence. The case does not end here.”

Lowell told followers on VivaMalta that he would appeal the court decision.

“A disgraceful judgement. We shall appeal of course and hope that an Appeals Judge, possibly on the verge of retirement, will retain a sliver of moral fibre and pronounce justice.

“The articles, as the Magistrate well knows were not a fair, factual, political attack on me. They accused me of wilful murderous intent, when DCG’s house was burnt. My anti-immigrant views have nothing to do with the merits of the case.”

Lowell also claimed that he was not the author of the forum comments MaltaToday quoted him in. “The police knew this and it seems, they never traced the author,” Lowell claimed.

The articles reported online commentary made by Lowell and supporters as they reacted to the arson attack, on which same night Lowell had organised a barbeque at Dwejra, not far from the Caruana Galizia residence.

A few hours after the arson attack, Lowell posted an entry on a far-right internet forum VivaMalta that read: “Yes, indeed, I have drunk to the dregs and toasted the heroes in my own incorrigible ways.” The comment was reported alongside various others made on the attacks on the internet forum.

Magistrate Depasquale noted that Lowell had never contested the assertion that he embraced anti-immigrant views. “The complainant, as a leader of an organisation known as Imperium Europa, has harsh and hard-line views on the immigration issue and whoever is involved in the defence of immigrant rights and therefore, by right, these views certainly evoke a similarly harsh reaction against him and his organisation,” he said.

The attack on Caruana Galizia’s home had been the latest in a series of similar attacks on critics of Lowell’s extremist beliefs, with previous victims including priest Pierre Grech Marguerat and lawyer Katrine Camilleri from the Jesuit Refugee Service, and also MaltaToday managing editor Saviour Balzan.

When throwing out the libel suit, Depasquale noted that Lowell’s behaviour and comments he had made on broadcast media were “not in any way acceptable in a democratic society, where diversity and multiculturalism form the foundations of Maltese society, as shown by the very language we speak”.

The former European Parliament candidate also insisted his anti-immigrant views were supported by 83% of the population. “We had 7,300 votes, by now probably doubled. We of Imperium Europa are determined to defend freedom of opinion, expression and diffusion of ideas.”