Updated | Roberta Metsola files police report over Facebook threat

A Facebook user told the Nationalist MEP to be careful lest she suffers a similar fate to Daphne Caruana Galizia

Roberta Metsola has filed a police report over a Facebook comment suggesting she could end up like murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia
Roberta Metsola has filed a police report over a Facebook comment suggesting she could end up like murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia

Nationalist MEP Roberta Metsola has filed a police report against a Facebook user who suggested that she could end up like Daphne Caruana Galizia.

“She should be careful or she will end up like Galizia,” read the comment. Caruana Galizia was killed using a car bomb in October 2017 as she was leaving her home in Bidnija.

The comment was posted under an article which suggested that Metsola had lied about not being able to attend a meeting between the President and newly-elected MEPs on Tuesday.

A spokesman for the MEP told MaltaToday that though she did not necessarily consider the comment to be a death threat, she chose to involve the police because such hate speech was “unacceptable”.

He said the police would now determine what action to take.

Moreover, the spokesperson pointed out that in many cases, such threats were the result of “dishonest spin”.

“The Labour Party's propaganda channel chose to publish a story about MEP Metsola, knowing full well that as she had an urgent flight to catch,” the spokesperson said, adding that the timing of the President's appointment, would not have made it possible for her to make then flight when considering “traffic and airport considerations”.

“Labour knew this, yet chose to spin it dishonestly,” the spokesperson added.

The meeting was scheduled to take place at 1:30pm on Tuesday.

Apology from man who wrote comment

The man behind the threatening comment, Josef Farrugia, later appeared to regret what he said, and took to his own Facebook wall to seemingly apologise to Metsola.

"I am the one who sent the message, I am very sorry, forgive me," he wrote.