Actress appeals court decision acquitting Torċa of ‘Nazi photo’ defamation

Pia Zammit has appealed the libel case she lost against it-Torċa over a photo of her wearing a costume with Nazi symbols taken backstage of a play.

The Occupy Justice activist had sued the GWU newspaper after it published the photo taken in 2009, showing Zammit wearing the costume.

The photo was taken backstage of the comedy play Allo, Allo! – based in Nazi era France - in which Zammit played the part of a French resistance fighter.

The magistrate’s court had thrown out the libel case, ruling that the Torċa article did not attribute Nazi sympathies to Zammit but had simply reproduced her reaction to the photo.

The court concluded that two articles published on two consecutive Sundays contained nothing defamatory and that Zammit had to expect criticism.

However, in an appeal from the judgment filed this morning, Zammit is insisting that the court failed to understand the “subtle false logic” on which the newspaper editor based his judgement. She said the court had to call this “perversion” for what it was.

“The right to freedom of expression does not include the right to twist the truth, pull facts out of their context, and use these facts as a weapon with which to hit out at Zammit. Justice dictates that the truth must be recognised and confirmed and perversion and absurdity side-lined… otherwise the scope behind having a libel law is lost,” the appeal reads.

Zammit said that nowhere in the articles did the Torċa editor indicate that she was an actor and that the photo was taken backstage of a comedy play that was based on Nazi-era France.

She insisted the photo was maliciously taken out of context to allow people who did not know her to conclude that she had Nazi sympathies – something she vehemently denied and went contrary to her activism in favour of the rule of law and democracy.

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