Arnold Cassola testifies on social media death threats in court

Independent MEP candidate Arnold Cassola has told a court that he had chosen to file a police report about a Facebook user who wrote about him dying because he found his comments threatening.

The politician took the witness stand before magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech on Tuesday, to testify in proceedings against Jesmond Muscat.

Weathering online insults and offensive comments are part and parcel of his life as a politician, Cassola told the court, but threats of violence and death were where he drew the line.

Muscat is charged with insulting and threatening the MEP candidate in a series of Facebook posts. Cassola exhibited printouts of the posts, one of them a screenshot from a video of the dancing pallbearers meme, on with Cassola’s face is superimposed, together with the words “Rip Cassola” superimposed over the video.

The picture had been uploaded by Muscat to his personal Facebook page, with the caption “Ejja ha nicelebraw (sic)” (come on let’s celebrate).

The defendant had also posted a picture of a toilet in reply to one of Cassola’s posts, writing “be careful someone doesn’t punch you in the face, don’t forget you are just an ordinary person, not some minister, there isn’t a harsher sentence, so you better leave people alone”.

“I ignore insults, because everyone has a right to their opinion, but when people threaten violence and death it’s a different matter,” Cassola told the court this afternoon.

Asked whether he had ever seen Muscat before, Cassola said that he hadn’t.

“I receive hundreds of insults. He used to regularly send me a picture of a rubbish bin with my face in it.”

The magistrate told defence lawyer Albert Zerafa to look at the pictures exhibited by the police, remarking they disgusted her.

Cross-examining Cassola, Zerafa asked the witness to confirm that he was complaining about the threats, and not the insults. The politician replied that he would receive many but that he had to draw a line, even in public life.

The court observed that one of the pictures was of a toilet with Cassola’s face on it. “He must have sent me 200 of those,” chuckled the witness.

In reply to a question from Zerafa, Cassola said that he hadn’t reported those, explaining that “for me, the dividing line is violence and death.”

The court appointed an expert to preserve copies of the Facebook comments on Cassola’s profile and other comments made by Jesmond Muscat, and to obtain any identifying information from service providers about the person using the profile.

The case was adjourned to May.