Appeal against acquittal of Castille security guards should be null, court told

The lawyers defending three men alleged to have held members of the press against their will after a tense late-night press conference at Castille in 2019, have argued that an appeal against their acquittal is null and void.

Journalists Monique Agius, Miguela Xuereb, Julian Bonnici and Paul Caruana Galizia had been covering an impromptu press conference during the extraordinary and turbulent events at the end of disgraced premier Joseph Muscat’s tenure on 29 November 2019 when, for several minutes, the media were not allowed to leave Castille by what appeared to be a group of plainclothes security guards.

The incident was captured on mobile phone footage.

Last year, Magistrate Joe Mifsud had acquitted Jody Pisani, Mark Gauci and Emanuel McKay of detaining the journalists against their will inside the Auberge de Castille during the incident.

The Attorney General had subsequently filed an appeal against the judgment.

Today’s appeal hearing began with the court being told that the journalists in question had not been notified of the sitting, something which the court attributed to an oversight.

Lawyer Matthew Xuereb proceeded to make detailed submissions, arguing that the AG cannot appeal from a judgment by the Court of Magistrates “because the appreciation of the facts doesn’t please him.”

He quoted from Magistrate Mifsud’s decision, which he said was based on factual constatations and the videos and testimony which the court had before it. The appeal was null because it deals only with the appreciation of the evidence, he said.

The lawyer told the judge that the right of appeal of the AG from summary cases was introduced in 2001: at the time of the Bill’s debate, Labour MP Jose Herrera had warned of a future situation of great political importance where decisions to appeal or not could be influenced. Xuereb added that then justice minister Tonio Borg said that the AG’s right of appeal did not apply to district sittings.

The magistrate had also expressed doubts about aspects of the case, said the lawyer, adding that this meant that “a doubt will always remain with respect to the proceedings, and this must always apply in favour of the accused.”

Representatives of the office of the Attorney General were asked to reply to the submissions by means of a note. Xuereb objected to this, but was overruled, the judge saying that the AG has a right to reply “in a prepared manner.”

He also noted that the parte civile had not been notified.

The court, having heard the defence raise the preliminary plea of nullity of the AG’s application because it felt that the AG appealed from the Magistrate’s court sentence when this form of appeal is not legally foreseen or permitted to the AG from sentences given by that court about district cases, noted that this sentence “is precisely about a district case.”

It gave 15 days to the AG to reply by a note to this objection. The case continues on 13 May. Lawyers Matthew Xuereb, Charlon Gouder and Ramona Attard were defence counsel.