PL Candidate Wants Godfrey Leone Ganado Jailed For Comment About Muscat And Abela
Labour MEP candidate Daniel Attard has said Godfrey Leone Ganado should go to prison over a Facebook comment he wrote about Robert Abela and Joseph Muscat and their families.
Attard filed a police complaint for hate speech against the Repubblika activist after he posted a Facebook comment under a post by NGO’s president Robert Aquilina about Abela and Muscat.
“God willing, the unexplained wealth they built on our backs turns to dust and buries them and their families in a pit of stinking manure,” Leone Ganado commented.
He followed it up by saying “when it comes to this trash, you need to call a spade by spade, and you need a spade to pick up this manure.”
This is what Malta’s hate speech law states:
“Whosoever uses any threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written or printed material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, or otherwise conducts himself in such a manner, with intent thereby to stir up violence or hatred against another person or group of persons on the grounds of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, colour, language, ethnic origin, age, disability, religion or belief or political or other opinion or whereby such violence or hatred is likely, having regard to all the circumstances, to be stirred up shall, on conviction, be liable to imprisonment for a term from six (6) to eighteen (18) months.”
According to Attard, Leone Ganado’s comment is an example of “stirring up hatred against a group of people on the grounds of their political or other opinion” and therefore classifies as hate speech.
He pointed out that Leone Ganado has already been punished by the courts over a Facebook comment in which he referred to MP Rosianne Cutajar as a prostitute. He has also found himself in hot water over other controversial comments, such as when he referred to TVM’s former head of news Norma Saliba as a “political prostitute”.
However, while Cutajar’s case was a civil libel suit, Attard wants the police to take action against Leone Ganado.
“This person, a member of the so-called ‘Repubblika’, is known for stirring up hatred, so much so that he has a history of this crime or related ones,” the complaint, signed by lawyer Ishmael Psaila, reads.
“He has no respect for the authority of the courts, who have found him guilty of similar crimes. I urge the police commissioner to investigate and prosecute Leone Ganado in court, where I will request an effective imprisonment term.”
“While the right to free expression is absolute, it shouldn’t come to the detriment of society, with comments that clearly stir up hatred in manifest breach of Article 82A, by his own admission.”
Robert Aquilina responded to the complaint by emailing the Police Commissioner to ask him to identify the comment in question so he could delete it as soon as possible.
Should these comments classify as hate speech?
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