There was another odd development in court today when the brothel-gate libel suits were being heard. Pawlu Lia and Edward Gatt filed an application on behalf of Chris Cardona’s secretary Joe Gerada who was also alleged to have been in the brothel.
The application had a photo taken from a phone that is supposed to be an image of a message sent to Daphne Caruana Galizia from a second source (who allegedly saw Cardona and Gerada in the brothel on the 31st January 2017) adding on to information provided by a first source to DCG of Chris Cardona’s and Joe Gerada’s adventure at the FKK Acapulco, the roadside brothel outside Verbelt, the day before, the 30th of January 2017.
It is important to clarify that this application refers only to information sent by a second source and makes no reference to the first source on which Daphne Caruana Galizia published detailed information about Chris Cardona and Joe Gerada’s visit to FKK Acapulco.
Presumably they meant to file a similar application on behalf of Chris Cardona but that session became quite nasty and was eventually terminated with the cancellation of the law suit as explained earlier.
In their application, the lawyers for Joe Gerada argue that the information sent to Daphne Caruana Galizia (on the second alleged sighting of Chris Cardona and Joe Gerada on the 31st January) was sent from a phone in Malta, not Germany.
It is extremely unclear what they base this claim on.
Also they ask the court to order the SMS logs and call logs on Daphne Caruana Galizia’s phone to be preserved and kept as evidence but not the SMS logs and call logs of the second source’s mobile phone. Logs would have a record of calls and messages sent and received but provide the recipient’s logs (in this case Daphne Caruana Galizia’s) but would contain no information on the location of the sender (the second source).
This makes the requested logs, irrelevant evidence to back up the claim that the second source was not in Germany at the time of the message. (And therefore unable to confirm the information he or she were claiming to be confirming).
In any case this request is being filed 17 months after these messages were sent and received which is 7 months beyond the data retention requirements at law. It is highly unlikely for any of the operators to be retaining logs, let alone the content of messages, 17 months later.
The lawyers for Joe Gerada and Chris Cardona will know this.
In the meantime Pawlu Lia this morning told the court he would be advising his client Chris Cardona what best to do after his lawsuit against Daphne Caruana Galizia was thrown out.
He has four days in which to ask the case to be re-opened, on condition of course that he steps up to testify on his own behalf.
In the meantime here are Daphne Caruana Galizia’s post from the time.
The first was published on 31st January, 2017 at 20:50.
The second was published the next day on 1st February, 2017 at 10:43. In this second post Daphne Caruana Galizia clearly distinguishes how she came by the information and the distinction between the two sources that informed her.
