Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/973467
maltatoday WEDNESDAY 25 APRIL 2018 News 3 KURT SANSONE ECONOMY Minister Chris Cardona has said he will not be dropping the libel cases he in- stituted against slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The libel case he filed against the journalist over claims that he had visited the Acapulco brothel while on an official visit in Ger- many last year, continues tomor- row. But Cardona denied reports that he planned to drop the cases against the journalist. "I am not going to stop the libel proceed- ings," Cardona told MaltaToday when contacted about the mat- ter yesterday. Cardona insisted he also had no intention of asking for a post- ponement of the case. Caruana Galizia's legal team have yet to present their evi- dence, which includes a sealed envelope of mobile communi- cations data being held under lock-and-key inside Magistrate Francesco Depasquale's cham- bers, which they hope will place Cardona near the brothel in Vel- bert. Until that stage of the case, Cardona could yet drop the libel case, even while opening himself to a possible counter-claim for damages and financial losses. Caruana Galizia's sons and widower had assumed legal re- sponsibility for the case after the journalist was murdered last October. The case revolves around a story published on Caruana Galizia's blog at the end of Janu- ary 2017 when the journalist claimed that Cardona and his aide, Joe Gerada, were at the Acapulco brothel in Velbert. Caruana Galizia claimed to have a Maltese eyewitness, who saw both men inside the brothel. At the time, Cardona and Gerada were on an official trip to Essen. Both denied being at the brothel and proceeded to sue the journalist. They also asked the court to issue a garnishee order on the journalist's bank account. The Caruana Galizia family later secured a court order for mobile phone data, known as Transferred Account Procedure (TAP), of the accused to be se- cured. The information will be important to establish whether on the days of the alleged brothel escapade, Cardona and Gerada were in Velbert or not. The data is sealed with the court and will eventually be re- vealed once the defence gets to present the data as evidence, which is likely to be entrusted to an independent expert appoint- ed by the Court to validate. The same data was collected for the mobile phone of Cardo- na's aide, Joe Gerada. Earlier this week, Caruana Galizia's son Paul tweeted his concern that Cardona may drop the libel case, in which case the data will never be made public. The tweet appears to have been motivated by the replies Car- dona gave to the Daphne Project when asked about the libel cases he filed against the journalist. In the replies released by the minister after last week's story on his alleged meeting at a bar with the men accused of killing Caruana Galizia, Cardona said Caruana Galizia's murder "has led to a re-consideration of these libel proceedings, both proce- durally and substantively". He told the Daphne Project that he had entrusted his legal counsel to see how best "it would be to move forward", refraining from further comments pending the end of proceedings. There had been an attempt late last year for the parties to explore a way forward but these floundered. Chris Cardona will not drop Caruana Galizia libels EMBRYO PROTECTION ACT PN leader says majority of Maltese against proposals CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 When members of the Op- position interrupted Fearne's speech and commotion en- sued, the minister clarified that an embryo has eight cells, while an adult human has hundreds of millions of cells. "We are not freezing a baby and putting it in the fridge," he said in response to the "fear- mongering" efforts of "some people" including the media. Fearne said that while IVF has existed in Malta for a long time, it wasn't being regulated. "Infertility doesn't affect only one or two persons, but 18% of people. This is a large amount of people – thousands – who need this medical ser- vice," Fearne said. Fearne said that he is "disap- pointed" by the "arrogance" of those who say that just because they wrote the law, the govern- ment cannot change it for the better – referring to the Op- position which has criticised the amendments. He reiterated that the amendments are being done for genuine reasons. Fearne said that this law al- ready began to be debated in the last legislature, explaining that amendments to the law were already being discussed at length years ago. "So for those who say that this is being done hastily, it is not true. We have been dis- cussing this for years, now is the time to continue discuss- ing and also to decide." Parliament already agreed on the principle of equality, particularly when it voted in favour of equal marriage and adoption, Fearne said. "You cannot give someone the right to have a family and then not allow them the opportunity to actually do this." Fearne clarified that dona- tion can only happen once, in order to avoid having children who are related to each other. They will only have access to medical history of their bio- logical parents. Fearne also announced that the government will be pro- ducing a consultancy docu- ment related to surrogacy for wide discussion outside of parliament, but insisted that 'altruistic surrogacy' will be decriminalised. Nationalist party leader Adrian Delia said that the ma- jority of people are against the amendments, and that if the government was genuine, it would consider wider consul- tancy with stakeholders be- fore passing the amendments. Delia said that Fearne is incorrect in implying that the Opposition is "fear- mongering" or that it wants to put people in prison for surrogacy. He also pointed out that Fearne spoke about infer- tile persons for 45 minutes, but spent only three minutes speaking about surrogacy, and that the rights of children were not mentioned at all. The PN leader also took is- sue with Fearne's statement that an embryo is made up of eight cells. "Just because it has eight cells, is it not human?" he said, explaining that the 2012 law clearly defines an embryo as human. "The amendments being proposed are not changing these definitions. This is why this is not an IVF law, or a law which protects the embryo – these are careless ideas," Delia said, saying that the govern- ment wants this bill to pass in a few days. Delia said that the Commis- sioner for Children, due to her stance in favour of the bill, is not protecting children "Who will protect the child in the womb?" he asked. Delia expressed concern on how a prospective parent will be matched with the em- bryo, to which PL MP Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi interjected to say that the PN leader is at- tempting to ridicule a serious discussion. Health minister Chris Fearne