In an offensive article entitled “The Internati – and who should be ashamed”, published by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, Judge Giovanni Bonello claimed that the deportation of 43 Maltese citizens regarded as being pro Fascist Italy in 1942 constituted a “crime against humanity” committed by Britain.

On close examination, the article in question is evidently a warmed-up rehash of a similar article that appeared in The Malta Independent on Sunday in March 2007. However, it seems that Judge Bonello is intent on bringing the matter up again, this time in a medium which has decided to shield him and his public from any possible reply on my part.

In my reply, which Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti has declined to publish, I pointed out that, at the time, Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini, in league with Nazi Germany, was subjecting Malta to incessant aerial bombardment and threatening invasion. The removal of 43 individuals regarded as Fascist sympathisers did not constitute a crime against humanity, as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court of Justice of 2002 and the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, for the simple reason that the 43 people involved did not constitute in any sense the population of Malta.

This is the real issue, as Judge Bonello himself says.

I should add that I was a young student at the time and the public outrage I remember was directed against the Internati.

Perhaps I should take comfort from the closing remark of Judge Bonello who states that he “will be eternally grateful that the western democracies vanquished the forces of evil in WW 2”, and that he cannot even start comparing the wrongs of Nazism and Fascism to those of British imperialism during that armed conflict.

I trust that this time, it is time we moved on.

Prof. J.A. Muscat

TA ’XBIEX