Repubblika president seeks police protection as cyber criminals impersonate Lovin Malta

Repubblika president Robert Aquilina is seeking police protection after being warned to do so by a Labour Party politician,

Earlier on Sunday Aquilina told the Times of Malta that he was warned by a politician that he was being targeted due to his criticism of government.

He initially dismissed the politician's warning, but concerns grew after cyber-attacks mounted on blogger Manuel Delia. 

A string of spoof websites and email addresses have appeared over the past week attempting to impersonate Manuel Delia, Repubblika, and several local media houses.

The latest victim was Lovin Malta. A spoof website with the url lovinmalt.com appeared online and was sent to media houses across Malta, including MaltaToday. The spoof site was used to host an article claiming Melvin Theuma lied under oath.

A common theme across the websites and email addresses is that they all attempt to undermine Repubblika, Manuel Delia and Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi. 

Over the weekend, spoof websites were set up impersonating Newsbook, Net News, and Strada Rjali.

The Prime Minister's "deafening silence"

Local pressure group #occupyjustice expressed deep concern over the recent warning given to Aquilina, stating that it trusts that authorities are doing everything possible to ensure the safety of members in civil society. 

However, #occupyjustice said its horrified by the Prime Minister's deafening silence, noting that a month has passed since the publication of a scathing public inquiry report that deemed the state responsible for facilitating the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, a vocal critic of the Labour government.

"Robert Abela's apology and pledge to learn from the conclusions of the report ring hollow now. Not a word. Not a condemnation. No support offered to those targeted. Evidently, lessons have not been learnt."

The NGO further noted that Abela had the perfect opportunity to send a strong message and offer protection to those concerned during his weekly Sunday interview on the Labour Party's media station. Abela spoke about a variety of topics during today's interview, but failed to acknowledge these recent cyber attacks.

"By not even acknowledging these attacks and threats, Robert Abela is, essentially, letting us know that he is perfectly comfortable with the harassment of his critics."