Torċa report suggesting actress was a Nazi sympathiser is 'disgusting', lawyer says

The lawyer for actress and Occupy Justice activist Pia Zammit, who sued newspaper it-Torca after if published pictures of her in a parody Nazi uniform costume, backstage at a performance, has described the accompanying article as “disgusting.”

Zammit filed for libel against Torċa editor Victor Vella in 2019, saying that a report published in the newspaper, suggested she was a Nazi sympathiser.

The report used a photo of Zammit in a 2009 stage performance of the comedy ‘Allo ‘Allo to suggest she had made light of the Nazi swastika, and published comments by an anonymous ‘educator’ claiming Zammit’s image had been offensive to victims of Nazism.

In his closing submissions this morning, Zammit’s lawyer Joseph Zammit Maempel said that the same newspaper had reviewed the play during its 2009 run. “So they know this play, they know that Pia Zammit is playing a member of the French resistance against the Nazis. If she was doing something, it was against the Nazis,” pointed out the lawyer.“The parody is so obvious, it is the article which is disgusting not her behaviour."

Zammit’s costume was a parody of a German uniform, with a swastika on each breast, magistrate Rachel Montebello was told. But the article in it-Torċa described the swastika as a symbol of human massacre and said its use was insensitive.

Lawyer Aaron Mifsud Bonnici, for the GWU-owned newspaper, told the court that "a photo of a well-known person wearing a swastika is a controversial action". He insisted that expressing disagreement with such actions is a fundamental human right. "The controversy isn’t that she is a Nazi but that she was making light of the symbols of Nazism."

"The controversy is not that she sympathises with Nazism but the use of it in comedy," he argued. “Silly things about matters of great importance is insensitive," he concluded.

The court will hand down its sentence on 3 December.

READ MORE: 

• Actress Pia Zammit files defamation suit over Nazi sympathiser report
• 'Nowhere am I referred to as an actor,' Pia Zammit testifies in libel filed over 'Nazi' photo