PL MP Carmelo Abela's libel case victory over lawyer Jason Azzopardi has been confirmed on appeal.

The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision that ordered Lawyer Jason Azzopardi to pay €7,000 in libel damages, where the court had ruled that a Facebook statement by Azzopardi defamed  Abela by linking him to a failed HSBC heist in 2010. Abela has worked as a branch manager at the bank at the time of the failed heist.

Azzopardi had appealed that decision, however lost it when the Court of Appeal delivered its decision on Wednesday. Judge Lawrence Mintoff confirmed the first court's decision in its entirety.

Among other things, the court of appeal did not agree that the impugned writing amounted to an expression of opinion, but considers that it was a plain statement of fact and of highly serious and specific accusations, in which the appellant even identified the respondent by name as the person who was an accomplice in an attempted hold-up that had taken place at the HSBC bank.

In a social media post after the Court of Appeal's decision, Azzopardi said that he respects the sentence, but "since I completely disagree with its reasoning, I will be initiating constitutional proceedings, as is my right, so that I may later appear before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Time will prove me right. As long as I know I am in the right, I never give up."