Police have decided against charging Norman Lowell with hate speech after the Imperium Europa leader advocated eugenics for babies born with mental disabilities.

The Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD) reported Lowell to the police last April after he said in an interview on F-Living that “horrible mentally defective babies should be aborted or granted a benign mercy killing”.

“The best Brits, from Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill to Bernard Shaw, all formed part of a eugenics society, because they wanted the uplifting of the quality of their people,” Lowell argued. “Does anyone enjoy going to a village which is full of village idiots? Does anyone want handicapped people? No one wants them.”

The CRPD argued that the promotion of eugenics is tantamount to hate speech, but the police have now countered this theory.

“Kindly note that following investigations carried out, there are no grounds for prosecution,” a police spokesperson told Lovin Malta.

While Lowell will avoid action by the authorities, the same cannot be said for F-Living, which was fined €1,160 by the Broadcasting Authority for airing the interview.

“It’s important to protect the fundamental human right of every person [to free expression], but this right is not absolute and the TV channel has a responsibility to ascertain that the rights of third parties are not being encroached upon,” the BA argued. “In this case, in particular in terms of people with disabilities, these comments were in bad taste.”

The interview was held a month before the European Parliament elections, in which Lowell won 8,238 first-count votes, making Imperium Europa the third most popular Maltese political party.

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