Realtà censorship row | Appeals Court decision deferred

The Court of Appeal has deferred the hearing of the Attorney General's appeal of the acquittal of novelist Alex Vella Gera and Mark Camilleri to December 2011.

The Appeals Court is being presided by Judge David Scicluna. Former Appeals Court judge Philip Sciberras was assisting his son, defence counsel Alex Sciberras.

Attorney General Peter Grech filed a 32-page appeal of the verdict of Magistrate Audrey Demicoli, who liberated the two accused of obscenity charges.

In his appeal the Attorney General argues that Vella Gera admitted to having written his short story Li Tkisser Sewwi “on impulse” and “without any form of self-censorship”.

“He was free to write what he wanted without self-censorship,” Grech states in the appeal. “But the author must realise there are others living with him, whose ideas, preferences and tastes are unlike his; a society that must be protected, and its morality preserved.

“And there’s God above everything and above everyone, and God is certainly bigger than the biggest of egos of even more famous writers.”