Chief Justice irked by probing questions on court delays

Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri issued a scathing comment on the reporting of The Times, after he refused to answer questions on court delays brought to national attention by comments from Magistrate Carol Peralta, calling the newspaper's campaign "appalling".

Camilleri, a former attorney general, told The Times he would not cooperate with their queries and took issue with some court reports that painted the judiciary in a negative light.

"I refuse to cooperate with, and thereby encourage by answering your queries, the kind of deplorable sensation-seeking tabloid reporting which The Times of Malta has been resorting to as of late in connection with judicial events," Camilleri wrote to the newspaper.

"I am disappointed that I had to spell out the message, which my silence to date was meant to convey."

Camilleri accused the newspaper of putting too much weight on the "frustrations of a magistrate who has been to Bosnia-Herzegovina" - referring to Peralta's comments on the absence of a prosecuting officer during one of his sittings - which remarks he said "have been repeatedly uttered by magistrates from time to time".

Displaying a degree of contempt for the way the newspaper was carrying out its reporting duties, Camilleri took issue with the fact that a photo of magistrate Marseann Farrugia was splashed "like a mugshot of a criminal" because her order to revoke bail was declared illegal by another magistrate.

An even harsher judgement was that made of the newspaper's court reporter, whom Camilleri said "seems to labour under the delusion that whatever happens outside his earshot has simply not happened."

The issue of court delays was raised by Magistrate Carol Peralta, who upon returning from the Kosovo war crimes tribunal, condemned delays caused by no-shows during the sittings.

While Peralta hit out at the "disgrace" of court delays as he took to the Bench for his first sitting in a Maltese court in eight years, it turned out that he had left 283 pending magisterial inquiries when he was appointed in 2005 as an international judge presiding over war crime trials in Kosovo.

While Peralta's complaints were given much prominence in The Times, highlighting the unnecessary delays in the Maltese courts, it turns out that magistrate Peralta was never partial to have his own caseload revealed in the House of Representatives.

Indeed in 2001, then justice minister Austin Gatt told the House that Peralta was one of several magistrates refusing to have his pending caseload of magisterial inquires publicised in the House - something Gatt had publicly criticised.

In comments he gave on breakfast show TVAM, Peralta said it was "physically impossible" for him to deal with the pending inquiry caseload, because these inquiries were pending further compilation by court experts.