Watch: ‘He Put Us All In Danger’ – Robert Aquilina Said He Asked Police Commissioner To Place Barriers In Front Of Court
Yesterday’s “solidarity meeting” in favour of Joseph Muscat brought thousands of people in front of court as the former prime minister walked in to be officially charged with financial crimes… but despite it all going down without any particular incident, Repubblika’s Robert Aquilina still believes people were put in danger.
“Angelo Gafà undermined you and put you in danger, he put us in danger,” Aquilina told journalists earlier today outside of court when asked about his thoughts on yesterday’s demonstration. “In a normal country, demonstrations are not allowed to happen in a way that there’s no security to whoever needs to go into court.”
“I personally asked Gafà directly to put up barriers here so that whoever is protesting won’t be able to enter,” Aquilina continued. “In the same way there is in front of Parliament, after all.”
“We’ve always cooperated with the police, so much so that we took it upon ourselves to inform them that we will not be holding a demonstration, yesterday or today” the Repubblika activist went on. “This is so that police could be at ease knowing they had to only control a crowd from one side, not two crowds against each other.”
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“Gafà’s subordinates thanked us and said we really did put their mind at ease, but he undermined your work and the work of the judiciary, because the judiciary doesn’t deserve to feel threatened like this,” Aquilina said.
When challenged and told there were journalists who came out and said they didn’t feel threatened yesterday, Aquilina reiterated that some, like ones on Net News, said they weren’t allowed to conduct their work with the serenity they should be allowed.
When asked about all of Repubblika’s protests and whether he felt that “the other side” couldn’t organise its own demonstrations, Aquilina said he was responsible for “practically every Repubblika protest” and they always worked “very differently, always cooperating with the police forces, even when we had demonstrations of 30,000 people”.
“Even then, we always insisted on the installation of barriers so that no one gets hurt,” Aquilina said.
What do you make of his comments?
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