Note to Malta Today: the proper news is that Libya’s deputy PM is living in Malta, and not that he isn’t the man in Xemxija

Yesterday I reported that Libya’s deputy prime minister, Sadiq Abdulkarim Abdulrahman, is living under armed guard in Malta and that he is the man who Times of Malta reported as having been seen dining frequently at a Mellieha restaurant.

I showed his photograph to a patron of that restaurant, who had seen an unidentified man, said to be Libyan, eating there often under heavy security, and he confirmed that this is the person he saw.

At no point did I say that he was the man in the Xemxija flat. What I wrote was “I have been unable to ascertain whether this is the man who was in the Xemxija flat.”

Times of Malta this morning, in a front page report on the back of my story yesterday, confirms that Libya’s deputy prime minister is indeed living in Malta.

Yet Malta Today, instead of running with the top news that Libya’s deputy PM is living under armed guard in an EU member state (here in Malta), has chosen instead to turn the story upside down and run a negating headline: Eyewitness: ‘Xemxija mystery man is not Abdulkarim’

The story is written by Miriam Dalli (not the Labour MEP) who is a close friend of the government’s chief of communications and who has been photographed leaning against him at a party, other than tweeting him for biscuits while being made to wait at the gate of Girgenti Palace for news about the cabinet reshuffle.

I have no doubt she spoke to Kurt Farrugia about this matter, as I did, to ask whether Libya’s deputy PM is living in Malta. And as I did, she would have got the reply: “In reply to your question this morning and as I explained on Sunday, the government will not comment further on matters of national security.”

In contrast, the news that the ousted prime minister, Ali Zeidan, is living here in Malta was denied outright by the government and repeatedly, by both chief of communications Kurt Farrugia and chief government spokesman Carmelo Abela.

Yet Ms Dalli treats the Libyan deputy PM’s living in Malta under guard as random speculation by this website, dismissing Times of Malta’s front-pager today as “subsequently picked up by the press”.

The eyewitness Ms Dalli interviewed for her piece says that the man he saw entering and leaving the Xemxija flat is neither Zeidan nor Abdulrahman, but a bald man “with Middle Eastern features” (presumably because half of Malta doesn’t actually have archetypal Middle Eastern features). Given that the prime minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, was seen entering the flat the Sunday before last at around lunchtime, we have to ask exactly what is going on here.

Foreign residents are not provided with between four and eight police officers and two unmarked police cars as round-the-clock guards unless there is some really high level action going on.

So you could say, why didn’t Miriam Dalli ask Kurt Farrugia who the Xemxija man really is? He must have told her. No, he wouldn’t have. I asked him that myself, point blank a few days ago, when it suddenly occurred to me that his repeated denials of Zeidan living in Malta would be merely what he was told to say. If the information is considered a matter of ‘national security’ then probably not even the government’s communications man would be privy to it. And so it is: “I don’t know who the man in that flat is,” he told me (translated from Maltese). “I am not told that kind of thing.”