From my article in The Sunday Times today: "But while a policy of ignoring the fate of migrants at sea gave Abela the demonstration match he needed to start looking tougher than Fearne, Repubblika’s efforts to resist his decision and hold him accountable to its consequences gave him a scapegoat he could isolate and dehumanise. [...]

To whip up support for its decision to flout international law by pushing back migrants into war-torn and warlord-infested Libya, Robert Abela’s government grounded its arguments in the Covid-19 crisis. But the secret push back plan had been long in the making. The existence of a ‘grand plan’ was confirmed by none other than Neville [...]

Prime Minister Robert Abela has made much of the fact that his conscience is clear. A pathological inability to feel any responsibility for one's own decision seems to be a requirement for the job he took over from his equally callous predecessor. But Joseph Muscat admitted he struggled with his conscience for having attempted – [...]

A spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has told this website that after checking they “have not heard about any delivery of aid from Malta”. The question about the nature of the aid was put to the UNHCR after government “informed sources” told TVM this week that “the Maltese government has sent [...]

Speaking to Italian Catholic newspaper l’Avvenire, the EU border agency Frontex provided information that shows that search and rescue services of Italy, Malta and Libya had been given the information they needed to rescue in time all passengers of a dinghy where 5 people died and another 7 were lost, presumed dead. The survivors were [...]

In spite of the effort to hide the name, identity and history of the boat that took migrants saved after the Easter weekend in Malta’s search and rescue area, there are interesting traces of her history left around the internet. The ship is believed to be one that is named as the Mae Yemenja. A [...]

Photo: Arezo Malakooti As reported earlier today the migrants involved in the Easter weekend disaster when 12 people are believed to have died at sea, sailed out of Libya on the night before Good Friday after about three days waiting on the beach, held there by traffickers with no food or water. After [...]

In the first week of April, my beloved Nanna Georgia turned 100. We had planned a big party because Nanna is a huge party animal and loves nothing more than to be surrounded by family on any given day, let alone on such a milestone birthday. But then Covid-19 hit and understandably so, the party [...]

Investigations by Nello Scavo of l’Avvenire and Sergio Scandura of Radio Radicale have thrown more light and provided details about the identity and the fate of the passengers of a dinghy identified by Maltese rescue authorities late on Easter Monday but dragged to Libya two days later by an apparently stateless boat showing no name [...]

Hours before migrants rescued in a Malta-run operation were taken to Libya, an Italian navy ship had to evacuate because of danger from artillery fire. The notice issued by the Maltese authorities in the middle of Monday night when they spotted the 55 migrants that were eventually dragged to Libya – those who had survived [...]

As a result of inadequate Customer Due Diligence procedures (checks), including lack of adequate due diligence in accepting clients, and in controls on transactions, on 20 October 2018, the MFSA (Malta Financial Services Authority, appointed Ernst & Young Limited (EY) as a ‘Competent Person’ in terms of the Banking Act, to take charge of the [...]

After long days of silence from the government and the army that refused to respond to criticism about the handling of salvage at sea over the Easter weekend, TVM is carrying daily detailed stories providing an unofficial account of the army’s rescue operations during that time. TVM says it is “investigating” the matter but the [...]

The daughter of Alfred Degiorgio worked within Chris Cardona’s economy ministry during the summer of 2017 until days before Alfred Degiorgio, together with his brother George Degiorgio and accomplice Vince Muscat are accused of assassinating Daphne Caruana Galizia. Chris Cardona has repeatedly denied knowing Alfred Degiorgio at all in spite of multiple stories to the [...]

In a single day Junior Minister Alex Muscat started to acquire a bit of a reputation of an uncannily inaccurate choice of words. That’s if we’re to be kind. The first incident was mildly amusing. Alex Muscat posted this tweet which proved to be a bit of an eats shoots and leaves incident. The junior [...]

There is misinformation aplenty out there about what happened since the Easter weekend: the government's decision not to save people in distress at sea, the impact that had on at least two boatloads of people, the deaths of 12 of them, Repubblika's calls for investigations into the incidents and the prime minister's unprecedented reaction. Even [...]

Apart from the 12 people on a boat who died while waiting for a rescue that never came because Robert Abela ordered migrants at sea are not saved, we have to remember the fate of the surviving 43 migrants from the same boat. They were sent back to Libya, driven back under circumstances never fully [...]

So our Prime Minister had a press conference to tell us that he is afraid of the challenge that he might go to prison because of the NGO Repubblika’s report to the Police accusing the PM, the Brigadier of the Armed Forces, and crew of P52 boat of sabotaging a ship rescuing illegal migrants. He [...]