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WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT €1.00 WEDNESDAY • 11 MARCH 2026 • ISSUE 981 • PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY KURT SANSONE ksansone@mediatoday.com.mt JAMES DEBONO jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt Labour MEP Daniel Attard claps back at Sammy Meilaq EDITORIAL • PAGE 11 Paola crematorium set to cater for 30% of all funerals in Malta THE Planning Authority board is ex- pected to decide on 26 March wheth- er to grant an outline permit for what could become Malta's first cremato- rium, following a case officer's rec- ommendation to approve the project in principle. However, the recommendation by the case officer, concerns an out- line development permit only. This means the board would be deciding on the principle of the development, rather than granting final approval for construction. CONTINUES PAGE 2 DANIEL Attard has defended his stand on Iran in the wake of criticism from retired trade unionist Sammy Meilaq, who accused the Labour MEP of "lying". During a protest against the Iran war outside the US embas- sy last Saturday, Meilaq took umbrage at Attard's comments to the BBC that the Iranian re- gime was "the root cause of the conflict". "You're lying. The real root cause goes back 70 years," Meilaq told protestors, accus- ing Attard of not being "a real Labourite". Meilaq was referring to cov- ert operations by the US and the UK in 1953 to topple the democratically-elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nation- alised the oil industry run by British interests until then. Subsequently, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was in- stalled as an absolute monarch until he was removed in the 1979 Islamic revolution that installed the the- ocracy still in place today. Attard argues in today's MaltaToday (see pages 9 and 10) that international politics "rarely offers the comfort of simple moral binaries" in a clear dig at Meilaq's narrative of good and bad. Attard, who is a member of the European Parlia- ment's delegation responsible for re- lations with Iran, says his view on the war is informed by the feed- back he has r e c e i v e d from the Iranian diaspora. "They dream of a different future. They want freedom. They want dignity. They want to build a modern future." He expresses discomfort over what he describes as the Amer- ican president's impulsivity and lack of a clear path forward on Iran but suggests that if the out- come leads to regime change it could give the Iranian people a chance to savour freedom. Attard insists the "world is not divided into heroes and villains acting in isolation". "If we are serious about addressing global crises, we must resist the urge to simplify them beyond recog- nition," he says. Daniel Attard Salvatore Di Prima (inset) was found alive and arrested by the police on Tuesday evening after a three-day search. Di Prima is suspected of trying to murder his two children on Saturday night in the environs of the White Rocks complex (Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday) SEE PAGE 5 WEDNESDAY EDITION