Malta showed good will by allowing Alan Kurdi migrants disembarkation - Prime Minister

The Maltese government agreed to a request by the German government to allow a group of 40 migrants on board the MV Alan Kurdi to disembark in Malta in order to display a sign of good will, Joseph Muscat said.

The Prime Minister said the migrants would not be of any burden to Malta, since they would all be relocated to Germany and other European Union member states, so it was only “common sense” to accept to take them in on humanitarian grounds.

Muscat was speaking during a brief telephone interview on One Radio on Sunday morning.

“I felt, even because it was a humanitarian issue, that we should accede to Germany’s request,” Muscat said.

“…If the country will be carrying out a humanitarian act, if it will not be creating any precedent and if another EU country tells us that it acknowledges that the migrants are not our responsibility, but that they would like us to [allow them in] and they would then be relocated… then it is common sense that we take them in and show good will, while still protecting the national interest and human life,” he added.

Amongst the other topics touched upon, Muscat also referred to this week’s Appeals Court decision against Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi in a defamation case had had instituted against Justice Minister Owen Bonnici after the minister had claimed that Azzopardi  favoured a PN benefactor in the 2009 transfer of the land on which the Lowenbrau brewery stood when he was parliamentary secretary responsible for the Lands Department.

The court’s rejection of Azzopardi’s appeal was a chance for Adrian Delia to take action, Muscat said, but instead the Nationalist Party leader, like Azzopardi himself, had remained quiet.

“Two courts have now said clearly that Azzopardi has a big political responsibility when it comes to the scandalous act involving the Lowenbrau land,” Muscat said, “It seems that the rule of law applies to everyone but not to him.”