Donations to the Facebook group “Donate to Support Karl ‘Kaiser’ Farrugia with his unjustified sentence” have topped the €500 mark, and the excess will be given to charity, Karl Farrugia told The Malta Independent on Sunday.He explained that since the money collected was more than the fine itself, it has been decided it would go to a charity, which so far has not been named.
He said the chances are that it will be an animal charity, but he has asked all those who joined the group and donated money to support him for their opinion.
Mr Farrugia said that the story, which was published on two Norwegian news websites and a Saturday edition of a popular Norwegian newspaper, has also resulted in donations coming in from Norway.
It was during the run-up to the Papal visit in mid-April that Mr Farrugia posted a comment on a Facebook group that was against the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Malta.
The group was a public one, he said, meaning comments could be read by anyone. What he insists, however, is that no one was forced to join a group that was explicitly against the papal visit.
The comment, which was along the lines of suggesting that the Pope should be shot in the hands, feet and side so as to resemble Christ more, resulted in his being taken in for questioning by the police.
About a week-and-a-half after the comment was posted, he says, he was contacted by the police and asked to go in for questioning.
The questions, put by the inspector of the Anti-Terrorism Squad were along the lines of whether he hates the Pope and why.
Mr Farrugia said he told them that he does not hate the Pope, as he has never met him, but said that he was against what he represented because of the lack of action, on his part, to deal with the recent cases of child abuse by priests.
After a couple of hours of questioning he was taken home to collect his computer and laptop, which were confiscated, and then locked up in a cell which was filthy to say the least, for some two hours.
When Mr Farrugia went to collect his computer a month later, he was handed his charge sheet and a computer that did not work. He said the police kept the computer to rectify the problem, and on 20 May his case was heard in court.
He admitted writing the comment, but contested the charges brought against him, insisting that the comment was a joke and was meant to have been read by people of the same way of thinking and interpreted as a joke.
People who do not have a similar mindset should not join such groups, he said, as it was obvious that they would not appreciate the joke.
His lawyer, Owen Bonnici, pointed out that as Facebook was registered in the US, his comment was not actually published in Malta and that his aim was not to incite people to do as he had written. He admitted that the joke was in bad taste but, nevertheless, it remained a joke.
Mr Farrugia was given a one-month sentence, suspended for a year, and fined €500. The news had barely come out, before his friends had set up the Facebook group to collect the money to pay the fine.
He said the response had been very good and donations had been received from people who did not know him but believed in freedom of speech, as well as from friends.
He met some of the people who wanted to donate money while others paid the money via Paypal. He says that the case has spread as far as the USA, through online fora and such, although he is not certain whether it was on the actual news.
Mr Farrugia emphasises that he has nothing against the police or the court, who treated him with utmost respect and whose duty it is to enforce the law; his problem is precisely the law that does not allow people to make their thoughts and opinions heard.
At the same time, there were other people questioned for similar comments, but none of them actually ended up in court, he said. He admits that the way he looks and dresses might mean that some people judge him before giving him a chance to defend himself.
As far as he is knows, nobody had reported him; the police came across his comment during an investigation while preparing for the visit. Some comments, which were posted about his story when it appeared in the local media, he said, further highlighted the hypocrisy of the whole thing, as some people suggested that he should be shot or suggested re-introducing the Inquisition, but nothing was done about them.
When his father spoke about these comments,
however, he was told to file a report.
He added that he is not interested in taking action against these people, as that would be going against what he believes in – that people are free to express themselves as they deem fit.
Mr Farrugia said he personally feels that the situation should not be so strict in Malta, and people should have more room to express themselves.
Another Facebook group that is anti-immigration is currently being investigated, he said, and he wonders why it is always the case that action is taken when the Church is somehow affected.
In addition, this investigation was only initiated after a journalist pointed it out in his defence, he said, wondering why they were never investigated.
He said that, in his opinion, law enforcement priorities should be established, because an illegal immigrant is far more susceptible to an attack than a heavily guarded pope.
Moreover, he said, he was charged with writing a comment that incited violence in a group of perhaps some 200 members, but the legal action only served to give rise to a lot of debate, which people who are not even on Facebook heard about.
If someone who read this comment on a Facebook group ran the risk of taking it seriously, what of the many people who have now heard about it.
The situation had been exacerbated by making it even more public, which had not been his intention.
SIC: MIOn