Peppi Azzopardi has hit back at the son of murdered businessman Luke Chetcuti, saying he was misinterpreted over a social media post on the prison.

On Sunday, Azzopardi said in a Facebook post that there are four prisoners who want to make a police statement about abuses taking place at the prison but that they are being “silenced” by the prison authorities.

Chetcuti took this to be a reference to the four prisoners who are currently in solitary confinement, and who include his father’s killer, Bojan Cmelik. In a scathing post, Chetcuti said the former Xarabank presenter should be ashamed of himself for defending murderers.

But in another post on Monday, Azzopardi insisted that he was not referring to Hugo Chetcuti’s killer or any other prisoners jailed for murder.

“In my post, I was defending four men who are jailed over drug-related charges and have killed no one … they were had only been trying to kill themselves with the help of drug pushers who make millions off people like them. It is a lie to say they are killers and that they include the person who killed Hugo Chetuti,” Azzopardi said.

He said Luke Chetcuti was criticising him over things he never said. “Had he had the decency to read what I wrote, he would have realised that I never spoke about his father’s murderer or any other murderers.”

“If anything is shameful, it is the way in which Chetcuti failed to read my status and attacked me over things I did not say.”

Azzopardi said he had written about the four prisoners after they contacted him and told him they wished to file a police report against the prison director. They were not being allowed to speak to the police “in a clear attempt to stop them from telling the police what they had witnessed in prison,” he said. 

He again condemned the murder of Hugo Chetcuti while pointing out that he had already sone so in a Xarabank edition that was held as a tribute to the late businessman.