Yes, and Mubarak hacked their website and brought it down
Aisha Gaddafi goes on Libyan state TV to deny that she tried to escape to Malta - of all places
At least one person who works at Malta Today is suspected of being the source of the ‘Aisha circling overhead’ and ‘Libyan warships in Maltese waters’ false stories which were aired on Al Jazeera and picked up by other international news media.
Now Malta Today is using those false stories to justify their hero John Dalli’s stance that international media reports aren’t credible because look, there have been false stories like those about Aisha Gaddafi and Libyan warships.
This does not mean that somebody planted those false stories to allow John Dalli to say days later that the media is misrepresenting the situation in Libya.
That would be the sort of conspiracy theory beloved of those who work at the Labour Party’s official organ KullHadd and at Malta Today itself. I think it more likely that somebody’s imagination ran wild and caused him to tip off Al Jazeera in return for some small consideration.
But it does mean that somebody is being very disingenuous here.
Then again, it was Malta Today which claimed, during the Egyptian revolution in January, that Mubarak’s forces had hacked their website because they were reporting on the revolution, and that was why it was down for the best part of a day.
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I’m disappointed with the response of Tonio Borg on Bondi Plus – he now seems to be defending John Dalli in the same way as the latter defended Gaddafi.
I was hoping for, and expecting, a far more direct denouncement of Dalli’s statements.
According to him Dalli was ‘being cautious’. He also saw no problem with Dalli being sorry for how he was ‘interpreted’ rather than for what he said.
Tonio Borg was being diplomatic. There’s no reason for the Maltese government to attack an EU commissioner who has already been publicly rebuked (more or less) by the President of the Commission himself.
He was beyond diplomatic in my opinion. He wasn’t just refraining from accusing.
He could easily have limited his reply to something like ‘I wouldn’t like to comment on that’ or some more diplomatic way of saying that.
Cal Perry, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Malta, said: “The [crew] initially said they had 14 people on board. They were circling overhead saying they were running low on fuel.
“At that point the ambassador from Libya who was here in Malta was called in to take part in the negotiations on whether or not they were going to allow this plane to land.
“As he entered the talks it became clear from the pilots that Aisha Gaddhafi, Muammar Gaddhafi’s only daughter, was aboard the plane.
“The government said it was an unscheduled flight, it doesn’t matter who is on board; they said it cannot land and diverted the plane back to Libya.”
Al-Jazeera TV quotes a source inside the Maltese government as saying that a Libyan plane carrying the daughter of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi sought to land on the island nation this evening but was turned back.
These two quotations refer to Aisha’s flight to Malta.
How could Perry have got his facts wrong?
I am sure he would have had somebody reliable to COUNT on in Malta!
Lou Bondi has just said that the “altar boy” (my addition) Toni Abela knew that his “breaking news” that Malta had exported small arms to Libya was false before he published it.
If this is true there is only one way out of it for Toni – disappear from the political scene.
Karl Stagno Navarra used to work for the PN media. He packed his bags in a hurry for reasons that we don’t need to go into here. He then joined Malta Today, then left and joined Al Jazeera, left again and rejoined Malta Today. So Al Jazeera have a contact person here.
He worked for Joe Grima’s radio and before that for Bay.
… in which case, maybe Neil Dent could fill us in …
There are people who cannot even spell the word “honour” let alone know the real meaning