Camilleri files rights breach claim over court order to investigate WhatsApp logs publication

Writer Mark Camilleri is claiming a breach of his fundamental rights to freedom of expression, after a Criminal Court ordered that the police investigate a contempt of court committed through the publication of criminal evidence.

The evidence, submitted in the prosecution of magnate Yorgen Fenech, accused of masterminding the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, consists of WhatsApp conversations between Fenech and former Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar.

Camilleri had published the chats in the course of a defamation lawsuit filed by Cutajar against him, as author of the political tell-all A Rentseeekers’ Paradise. The unredacted chats were then made public just 24 hours before Camilleri was due to face Cutajar in court. The chats reveal that Cutajar had traded in influence and failed to disclose receiving expensive gifts from the Tumas magnate. The day after the chat was leaked, Cutajar’s lawyers wrote to the Attorney General, arguing that the public prosecutor must inform the court and request an investigation into the leaks.

In his rights’ claim, Camilleri’s lawyers – Joseph Mizzi, Deborah Chappell and David Bonello – argue that the order to investigate the publication of the chats breached the fundamental right of freedom of expression, and the public’s right to receive information that is of public interest.

“Journalists depend on the protection of their sources to be able to bring to the public such information from confidential sources. These sources benefit from the legal right to remain anonymous and therefore protected from any repercussion,” the claim reads.

“The authorities appear to assume that the source of the WhatsApp logs is the criminal case itself. Our client denies that he obtained these logs from the criminal proceedings and that he broke the court order [on the said evidence].”

The lawyers said their client had a fundamental right in publishing WhatsApp logs leaked to him by a third party, and insist that the fact this same information is prohibited by its being part of the criminal evidence, then this limited the journalist’s freedom of expression.

The lawyers cited case-law in which they said that the WhatsApp chats’ publication was an interference that “did not correspond to a social need sufficiently pressing to outweigh the public interest in freedom of expression” as per the European Convention of Human Rights.

Camilleri also alleged a breach of his right to a fair hearing, given that the court order to investigate the contempt of court was issued without having heard his defence. Camilleri said he had emailed the Commissioner of Police on 22 March saying he was willing to give his version of events.