Fort squatters flaunt photos of illegal pool on Facebook

A squatter has shared multiple photos of his family and friends swimming, partying and barbecuing around an illegally built pool in a British-era fort they have been illegally occupying for years.

The photos, posted to Facebook, show Steve Buttigieg swimming in the illegally constructed pool with friends and family and cooking meat on a barbecue in what appear to be small pool parties held in the 19th-century protected Fort Binġemma in the limits of Rabat.

The photos are publicly available even to people who are not friends with Buttigieg on Facebook.

The pictures also show several other parts of the fort where the squatters appear to live and work, and multiple pictures show several cars parked inside the fort, including a pimped-up BMW and a Mercedes.

It is understood the squatters transformed part of the Grade1 scheduled fort that was likely used by the British as a store for machinery into a makeshift swimming pool.

But over the past weeks, Lands Minister Silvio Schembri has been repeatedly telling reporters that despite an eviction order issued by the Lands Authority, he does not feel it is right to kick the squatters out of the fort, fearing the family might end up homeless on the streets.

Schembri has previously said that the government is in talks with the Housing Authority to find alternative accommodation for the family, and when a Malta Independent reporter this week pressed him on the progress of those talks, Schembri told her he does not understand why there is so much insistence on kicking out squatters.

“I don’t think any of us would like to see people living on the street, and so I sincerely don’t understand this insistence on kicking people out,” he said.

An internal audit by the Lands Authority published last year established that the squatters have no legal title over the land and confirmed that an order for the tenants to be evicted from the fort in 2009 was never carried out by what was then known as the Lands Department, nor by the present authority.

Originally built in 1878 as part of the Victoria Lines, the historic fort’s purpose was to defend the island from an invasion.

The fort was originally leased to Gaetano Buttigieg for cowrearing just before the 1981 general election.

The Lands Authority audit says the lease, which never allowed the fort to be used as a private residence, expired in 1997. The government’s property division, however, kept on accepting rent from the Buttigieg family, even after the lease expired.

The weeks-long talks between the government and the Housing Authority also concern squatters who are occupying Fort Bengħisa, another British-era fort in Birżebbuġa. Other squatters also occupy the historic fort 12 years after the leases expired and parts of it are used to illegally hunt and trap birds.

“I sincerely don’t understand this insistence on kicking people out – Minister Silvio Schembri