Police arrest BirdLife member for recording poaching incident

A BirdLife Malta member of staff was arrested and cautioned by the police inspector of the Administrative Law Enforcement earlier today after recording the events following an incident where a recently dead Little Bittern, a protected species, was witnessed in the mouth of a hunters’ dog. The member of staff spent over two hours in police custody.

Today’s incident began at about 10:20am when a BirdLife Malta team member called 119 after witnessing the incident. An ALE team finally attended the incident at about 11:40am.

“Instead of focusing on identifying and arresting the suspected perpetrator, the ALE became more concerned that the incident was being recorded. The arrest of the BirdLife Malta member of staff then followed and he was transferred to the ALE Headquarters for questioning accompanied by five police officers,” BirdLife said.

BirdLife also has a sound recording of the arresting officer telling a Maltese BirdLife volunteer at the scene of the incident that, “You are all faggots, the lot of you” (“pufti kollha” in Maltese).

“We will be making this available to the police if they request it,” BirdLife executive director Steve Micklewright said. “In the meantime we are calling for the immediate suspension of this officer.”

This is the second time in ten days that BirdLife staff have been required to spend time in police custody.

On Saturday 12 April, two BirdLife staff members spent about four hours at the ALE headquarters being questioned by police, after BirdLife reported evidence of illegal hunting on the first day of the hunting season in the media.

On both occasions, the BirdLife staff were released without charge.

These incidents follow the decision of the Commissioner of Police to deny BirdLife’s request for a member of the Administrative Law Enforcement team to accompany their volunteers during its Spring Watch and Raptor Camps since September 2013.

“The Commissioner of Police took the decision to make the close cooperation that has existed between BirdLife and the police more difficult by stopping a member of the ALE from being out in the field with us, even though we had always paid that officer’s salary during the time he was with us,” Steve Micklewright, executive director of BirdLife said.

“It is surely no coincidence that there are now misunderstandings taking place between BirdLife Malta and the ALE.”

In a letter to BirdLife Malta the decision of the Commissioner was justified on the following grounds: ‘please be informed assistance against payment is not being considered… Instead this year we are committed to intensify our efforts by increasing more police personnel to support all the stakeholders to fight illegal bird poaching… in order to have better and quicker action any reports or information shall be forwarded through our control room to be dealt with accordingly.’

“While we understand the incident regarding the Little Bittern is now under active investigation, but it could be that valuable time has been lost while the ALE questioned BirdLife staff,” Micklewright said.

BirdLife said it has come under pressure to sign a communiqué that calls for closer cooperation between the government, environmental NGOs and hunting organisations to eliminate illegal hunting of birds. “We are of course very keen to eliminate illegal hunting by cooperating with the police in particular,” Micklewright said.

“The reinstatement of the ALE officer that used to accompany us would ensure misunderstandings like today’s are eliminated and we can all focus on stopping the illegal killing of birds, which should be everyone’s top priority.”