Robert Aquilina, the president of rule of law group Repubblika, has called on the prime minister to publicly dissociate himself from remarks made in a radio interview by former Labour general secretary Jason Micallef.
He said in a Facebook post that Micallef had made a personal and dangerous attack on him in a way that was "dehumanising and dangerous".
Aquilina and Micallef crossed swords during a discussion programme hosted by academic Andrew Azzopardi on RTK on Saturday.
Micallef repeatedly described Aquilina as an "agent of hate" saying that he and his Repubblika associates had a crazy and dangerous obsession to persecute former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who they wanted to destroy.
He also accused Aquilina of playing the martyr after the Repubblika president said that he had a string of court decisions showing he was the actual victim of hate speech.
Aquilina said in a Facebook post he had no doubt that Micallef's "savage" attack was made on the instructions of Muscat and the motive was to dehumanise him. It was also obvious that the words used by Micallef translated to hate which could become dangerous actions. This was unacceptable in a democratic society.
Micallef also resorted to Facebook, saying hate-filled comments on Aquilina's Facebook wall by Repubblika supporters, with Aquilina's own blessing, were shocking.
Reproducing some of them, he said he had never seen so much personal abuse and could easily sue a dozen people for hate speech and incitement to hatred, adding he would not be intimated.
Repubblika condemnation
Repubblika in a statement condemned Jason Micallef's attack on Aquilina, saying this was the sort of attack which could lead anyone to think he could do whatever he wished to Aquilina.
The NGO also warned of the seriousness of those statements and said it was holding Micallef responsible for any consequences from his remarks.
It added that it was writing to the police commissioner calling for increased protection for Aquilina in view of Micallef's remarks and recent incidents of intimidation.