Andrea Prudente Files Libel Cases Against Jason Azzopardi And Simon Mercieca
Lawyer Lara Dimitrijevic has opened two libel cases on behalf of Andrea Prudente and her husband Jay Weeldreyer with regards to comments made by Jason Azzopardi and Simon Mercieca accusing the couple of essentially duping the Maltese system to help usher in abortion through a back door.
Azzopardi, a lawyer and former PN MP, insinuated on his Facebook account that Prudente’s incident when she claimed to need an abortion to save her life was deliberately orchestrated to create a controversy to kick start an introduction to abortion laws, so far a big taboo in Malta.
He accused nefarious unnamed third parties of conspiring with the pregnant woman to travel here and create a controversy about the termination of pregnancy by pretending to be in danger.
He claimed that this is not a theory but a fact.
Meanwhile, academic Simon Mercieca, who runs a blog under his name , published an post by an anonymous reader.
This was a long, conspiratorial hatchet piece that alleges deliberate duplicity between the couple and an international conspiracy involving the American government and The Guardian newspaper, amongst others, to introduce abortion in Malta.
The author alleges that Jay Weeldreyer came from a sketchy financial background with an unstable employment record. He describes him as “the American schemer”.
Prudente’s case has prompted the government to revisit Malta’s zero-tolerance abortion laws to allow doctors to terminate pregnancies if they have reason to believe the mother’s life or health are in danger.
In response to these allegations, Dimitrijevic opened two libel suits on behalf of the Americans, betraying a sense of outrage in her statement.
“This morning, I filed two libel cases on behalf of Andrea Prudente and her husband Jay Weeldreyer against Jason Azzopardi and academic Simon Mercieca.”
“As for the leader of the opposition and all those that spoke on behalf of Partit Nazzjonalista, there is no hiding behind parliamentary privilege.”
“Shame on you and the very least you can do, if you have a shred of human decency, is to apologise for your insensitivity and below-the-belt comments. Or you can do as your previous leader shouted on numerous occassion ‘Barra’. You are not worth a seat in parliament.”
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