Imagine... I’m walking down the street when I hear cries for help. I’m not sure where they’re coming from exactly, but as I turn the corner I see a little boy bleeding from his leg and head in someone’s front yard. I panic because the kid looks pretty beat up and I can’t get to him because there’s a fence and a locked gate between us. He’s in so much pain that he can’t walk over to open the gate. I ring the doorbell but no one answers so I do what I believe anyone else would – I look around for someone to help me, but when I see no one I jump over the fence and try to calm the child. I then run to the front door and knock as hard as I can. Again no one comes to the door so I pick the little boy up and carry him to the polyclinic just down the street.

The boy is taken care of, the authorities are advised and, within a few minutes, his parents turn up. They’re in shock of course, and the mother is bawling her eyes out, but once they see that their son is all right, they call the police and press charges against me for trespassing on their property and for abducting their child.

Now technically I did trespass, and technically I did abduct that child (albeit for the whole duration of five minutes, and with the sole intention of helping him), but you wouldn’t think that the authorities would take the parents’ charges seriously, right?

Wrong!

While my little story is entirely made up, a similar one happened back in 2012, and last week, Magistrate Aaron Bugeja decided to investigate the ‘rescuers,’ who like me (in my imaginary story) had no intention of breaking the law but only of helping the injured.

Back in October 2012, Birdlife published a photo showing six people holding seven injured birds. These protected birds had been found close to death in our countryside and they were taken to Birdlife after some charming hunters had shot them out of the sky. Most of the birds did not make it and one was dead on arrival.

The intention behind the photo was to show the savagery of illegal hunting; to make a point; to raise awareness; to get one step closer to stopping this atrocity. Technically however, anyone caught in possession of a protected species is breaking the law, but thankfully some people have more common sense than others and are reluctant to waste taxpayers’ money on silly witch-hunts.

Despite knowing the law inside out, the Police Commissioner had refused to press charges against Birdlife volunteers because he strongly believed that they did not have criminal intent. In reality, by taking this photo and publishing it themselves, Birdlife volunteers where acting as whistleblowers.

But of course, FKNK members Joe Perici Calascione and Lino Farrugia challenged this decision and went to court with an appeal. And lo and behold, instead of throwing the case out and sparing us some tax money, Magistrate Aaron Bugeja ordered the police to investigate and to proceed with criminal action against the Birdlife activists.

Puhhlease!

Lawyers who commented to the media described this decision as “Legally correct but illogical.” 

Now, I’m no lawyer and have no such patience, so I’ll call a spade a spade – while this decision might be legally correct, it is also a complete waste of taxpayers’ money and the already limited resources that we have. It also gives out the wrong message and makes a mockery of our legal system. This not only makes it illogical but downright wrong and silly.

The argument that the magistrate used to justify his decision was that the people in the photo might not be authorized to handle protected species. And again, technically and legally the magistrate is right, but still so terribly ridiculous and sad. It’s sad because this interpretation of the law means that if I happen to be walking in the countryside and I come across an injured bird, I’m safer walking past it and letting it die than trying to rescue it.

Lawyers who found the decision as ludicrous as I did, argued that had we to apply this same logic (or rather non-logic) to other scenarios, we’d end up with situations where a police officer who seizes drugs and carries them to the police station could be charged for illegal possession, and the same goes for lawyers who present exhibits in court such as firearms and other weapons.

Is this the message we really want to send out? Or is there some hidden agenda? Is it possible that the hunters have even more strings to pull and are now pulling them because they fear the worst?

I mean, when you see these ridiculous decisions supposedly being taken by mature reasonable people and add them to the fact that the government seems to be doing everything in its power to sabotage the abrogative referendum by postponing local council elections; and when you consider all the legal hoops that the Parliamentary Secretary for Animal Rights is jumping through to re-legalise wild-finch trapping, one can’t help but wonder.

 

NOTE :

Alison Bezzina will be on hiatus for the month of August and her column will return in September