Self-suspended prison director Alex Dalli was in court on Thursday morning for a libel suit he filed against Sunday paper Il-Mument over a report on claims made by an inmate about abuse allegedly suffered at his hands.
Dalli suspended himself last week following the latest in a series of suicides under his leadership as well as grave allegations.
The story, titled, Alex Dalli mhux postu hemm- Eks ħabsi jiżvela x’jiġri wara l-bibien ta’ Kordin, was carried by the Nationalist Party media on August 29.
That publication prompted Dalli to file libel proceedings against the author of that article, Christine Amaira, along with editors Alex Attard and Dione Borg, contesting various parts of the text which he claimed to carry “false and defamatory allegations” against the applicant.
“‘Mr Dalli was very, very angry,” recounted the man.
He said Dalli told prisoners “he feared nobody” and went on to allege that the prison chief “had placed a pistol against the inmates’ head,” went the story.
That particular paragraph had been purposely highlighted “in orange” in Dalli’s original libel application, his lawyer, Mario Mifsud said when asked to identify which parts of the publication were being contested.
That part of the story was being “most strongly contested,” said Mifsud, adding that the rest of the article “was mostly recycled material”.
After the respondents’ lawyer Peter Fenech confirmed that the editor of the Sunday paper was Dione Borg, Dalli’s lawyer said that his client was formally withdrawing his claims against Attard, the other editor named in the original application.
Dealing with preliminary issues at the start of the libel suit, the court, presided over by magistrate Rachel Montebello, asked the parties’ lawyers whether there was any possibility of the claims being settled through mediation.
“We are open to that but it’s unlikely that we’ll get there with the other side, given the atmosphere of tension at the time,” explained Dalli’s lawyer.
Having discarded that option, the court adjourned the case to January for the applicant to put forward his evidence.