It was some seconds after midnight on a New Year’s Day when the first email came through. Its receiver thought it was a season’s greeting message: instead it was a series of porn pictures.

The receiver did not recognise anyone at first, then she glimpsed what she thought was a new employee (from his tattoo).

Then the receiver deleted the file.

A few days later, the receiver got the same file again. Again, that file was deleted.

By that time, the receiver started getting really worried about the security of the company’s email system and was afraid this porn email could be sent on to clients and customers, let alone to the mother company abroad. So an expert was sent for to put in stronger firewalls to keep that email out.

But when just one outlet remained to be done, the hate email came again and made its way to the one remaining outlet, which happened to be the outlet where the intended victim worked and was seen by the entire workforce of that outlet.

That is when the victim made a police report. Afterwards, it is said, the victim wanted to retract the charge but the laws of Malta state there are crimes where police investigations can only be triggered by a report to the police. However, in some cases, even if the victim retracts, the police carry on with the investigation and the prosecution. Such happens, for instance, in rape cases. And it happened this time too, especially when the Cyber Police got involved and more details revealed.

I write this because, unlike so many people who have been writing about the Cyrus Engerer case without knowing the facts, I happen to have been given a first-hand description of the background.

I write this to show the premeditation, the vindictiveness, the hate that must have gone into the act of revenge, even though I have never met Mr Engerer, or his victim.

As a result, we now have this cause celebre which could prove to be a game changer.

I intend to deal with Mr Engerer’s position last.

First, there is the very predictable blanket defence given him by the party leader. I know I will be pilloried for this, but Muscat’s aggressive defence of Engerer on Friday reminded me of Gonzi’s defence of JPO in the week prior to the 2008 election, culminating in the tears in Mosta (strange coincidence: Labour’s meeting today is at Mosta), then the charade inside the PBS studio when JPO, having failed, or been thwarted, of confronting Sant at Mistra, presented himself at the studio as a ‘journalist’.

We all know what happened later: for the next five years Gonzi was a puppet in JPO’s hands who at long last, after having squeezed him dry, dropped him.

OK, there are differences: JPO then had not been found guilty by a court, whereas Engerer has been found guilty by the Appeals Court.

Politically, it is in the nature of a political party to react fiercely when a key member is under attack. There are cases, under both administrations, where people have been left to hang, but many times parties defend their men even when they know they have done wrong. It happens in the best families.

But in defending Mr Engerer, Muscat has shot first and may get to think later.

He is wrong to attack the judge, and, by implication, the whole judiciary. We have not heard any cry, or whimper, or burst of outrage by the cowed judiciary, usually so ready to defend its rights and privileges.

But the message has got across: this is back to the bad days of 1984 when the judiciary bowed till it could bow no more and then bravely defied all the regime’s pressures.

To say or hint this judgement was the work of the Nationalists is a huge injustice to Mr Justice Mallia who suffered so much under the Nationalists until they had no alternative but to appoint him in view of his rectitude, seriousness and fairness.

By implication, the words that have been uttered by the Prime Minister also imply a condemnation of the Attorney General who had the ‘temerity’ to appeal from a magistrate’s judgement which exonerated Engerer. While judges and magistrates have security of tenure, the Maltese system gives far more power to the AG but he remains more and more under the power of the government of the day.

There is then a subtext which has never appeared in the Prime Minister’s words, but which has been rife in the social media. The crime in itself was a dastardly homophobic crime – or rather it would have been a dastardly crime even between heterogeneous couples – but the way it has been received by the population at large has been very inadequately plastered over a yet incomplete absorption of the new (for Malta) phenomenon of gays in mainstream life.

I know a recent article I wrote has been bollocked by the gay community for having argued that the public manifestation in Palace Square when the Civil Union Bill was approved by the House was a ‘tasteless gesture’. I now know that my opinion was shared by some gay friends of mine (and friends of friends) who pointedly stayed away from Palace Square and all that razzmatazz.

I have come to understand too that although the move towards ensuring acceptance of the gay people’s demands may have been a rather forced march for the country, it is well on its way to being accepted. And there is, of course, no turning back.

But the acceptance of gay people and their lifestyle is still not mainstream across the whole country and there is still an awful lot of homophobia around. This Cyrus Engerer case has been received by an ample strata of the population in which Engerer was found guilty because he is gay when the fact of the matter is that he has been found guilty of a homophobic attack on a gay person. Whether carried out by a heterosexual or by a homosexual, it is still hateful and is still a crime.

But there you have it: for some people Engerer has been found guilty because he is PL and for others he has been found guilty because he is gay. When, on the contrary, all those who campaigned for gay rights (and all those who danced and wined in Palace Square, why not?) should have been the first to protest at this vicious, premeditated, homophobic attack.

Finally, the man himself. He has now joined an elite club which has started to make itself a factor in Maltese politics. I would add: unfortunately, but then the experience of other countries shows we are not alone in this phenomenon. Mr Engerer has joined the elite group composed of, besides himself, JPO, and Franco Debono. But he is the only one to have crossed from one side to the other. The two others did not actually cross but Dr Debono is (or was) Mr Engerer’s defence lawyer in his homophobic attack case and JPO accompanied Labour supporters into Castile on the morrow of the election.

Mr Engerer has now been called ‘soldier of steel’ by his party leader, although I have yet to discover where the steel really is. He was no soldier of steel when he was inside the PN, that’s for sure. Nor am I able to see where he has proved to be a soldier of steel in this sordid case. At no point can I discern any temptation to make him reverse his crossover. Nor do I discern any specific and marked Socialist trait, if that is still the political leaning of the PL and its leader, although I understand that apart from this case he is articulate and has benefitted from his studies in Malta and abroad.

Finally, I still cannot fathom the real reason for Dr Muscat’s angry tirade and his extremist defence. It cannot be just because Cyrus Engerer, who is his friend, lost his case in the Appeals Court. It cannot be because the Nationalist Party latched on to the case and made an issue out of it.

Could it be because the rumbling inside the party has now become more widespread than is thought? And the party is distancing itself from the ‘moviment’? After all, it was only this week that we read, in European Voice, that the Deputy Prime Minister himself, Louis Grech, disagreed with IIP.

That Dr Muscat goes ballistic when cornered, we know. In this case, the aggressiveness may have an unthought-of source.

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