Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi is set to return to the witness stand in libel proceedings filed against him by Minister Carmelo Abela when the case resumes next month. 

The libel suit was sparked by a Facebook post in which Azzopardi claimed the minister was linked to a failed armed robbery at HSBC Qormi back in 2010.

When testifying in July, Azzopardi claimed that days before that botched heist, Alfred Degiorgio, one of the alleged hitmen in the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination, had been handed plans for the robbery and a set of false keys. 

Vince Muscat, a self-confessed and convicted hitman in the Caruana Galizia murder plot, had allegedly accompanied Degiorgio to a Fleur-de-Lys apartment for the meeting wherein plans, footage and false keys to the bank premises were supplied in the presence of former minister Chris Cardona and Abela. 

That testimony had prompted an immediate reaction by the minister who smiled in the courtroom, shaking his head in disbelief. 

Azzopardi’s testimony was scheduled to continue on Wednesday but recently, the minister’s lawyer, Pawlu Lia, filed an application requesting an adjournment. 

In the presence of Abela himself who was in court, Azzopardi’s lawyer, Joseph Zammit Maempel, did not object to that request.

The court, presided over by magistrate Rachel Montebello, deferred the case to October for continuation of the respondent’s testimony.