Former Labour MEP and MP John Attard Montalto said he misled Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici on the day Socialist thugs attacked the Curia in Floriana in 1984.

Speaking to Simone Cini, Attard Montalto said that he had done so because he was afraid that someone would take a photo of the then Labour-leader designate and it would have been interpreted as him encouraging the offenders.

Nobody would have said that he was there to stop them; it would have been said that he was there to encourage them, Attard Montalto said.

The incident took place in September 1984, three months before Mifsud Bonnici was sworn in as Prime Minister after Dom Mintoff's resignation. It was the time when the Labour government wanted to close down Church schools, which Attard Montalto described as being "the closest we were to a civil war".

It was not only Nationalists who sent their children to Church schools, he remarked.

On the day, Attard Montalto said, he had walked alongside Mifsud Bonnici from the law courts towards Floriana. Mifsud Bonnici had realised that part of the crowd of dockyard workers who had gone to Valletta in protest had turned into a street which led to the police headquarters and the Curia.

Mifsud Bonnici had asked Attard Montalto where they had gone and, in reply, the latter had said that they had walked towards Sa Maison. He said he had done so because he feared someone would have taken a photo of Mifsud Bonnici with the workers near the Curia.

The day after, Mifsud Bonnici had asked Attard Montalto why he had not told him the truth. Attard Montalto had replied that he had done so to protect him (Mifsud Bonnici). "I couldn't imagine what would have been said if a photo had been taken (of Mifsud Bonnici) with people going in and out of the Curia and with the police totally absent".

On that day, socialist thugs had broken into the Church headquarters, tearing paintings, breaking glass and damaging statues.