‘There is a complete cover-up’: A year on, family of murdered Maltese journalist despair

Pulling out of her driveway, a year ago on Tuesday, Maltese blogger and investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed in a car bomb, a shocking event for the rural hamlet of Bidnija.

Described as a ‘one-woman WikiLeaks’, Caruana Galizia was undoubtedly the most famous investigative journalist in Malta for her insistence on unearthing and denouncing the transgressions of corrupt Maltese politicians and those politically exposed, despite facing decades of intimidation, threats and lawsuits against her ­– and being arrested twice by the Maltese police.

The 53-year-old’s popular blog Running Commentary relentlessly investigated Maltese kleptocracy, clientelism, nepotism, tax evasion, and other criminal activity such as use of the island by Russian oligarchs for money laundering and Libyan syndicates as a base for smuggling oil to southern Europe.

Caruana Galizia’s work, the sheer brazenness of her assassination and the lawlessness that it implies, have helped lay bare the cesspit of illicit organised and financial crime in Malta, which is a full European Union member.

Caruana Galizia left her home in Bidnija just before 3pm on the afternoon of her murder with the intention of reopening her bank account. It had been frozen because Maltese economy minister Christian Cardona filed a libel charge – one of 47 pending lawsuits – against her.

The charge stemmed from an article she had published about Mr Cardona allegedly visiting a brothel while travelling to Germany on official business. She suspected her phone was bugged, so had arranged a meeting to discuss her frozen account in person at the bank.

But she never made it. A remote-controlled bomb had been planted under the drivers’ seat of her car, and it detonated a short distance from her home. Her car was thrown off the road in a deadly explosion.

Her murder attracted widespread local and international reaction. Thousands of Maltese took to the streets of the small Mediterranean island, marching against the so-called “mafia state”.

Caruana Galizia’s family made it known that they did not want either Malta’s prime minister or president, both of whom had been subjects of Caruana Galizia’s criticism, to attend her funeral.

A year later, her family deplore the lack of progress that seems to have been made in the investigation.

“It appears that absolutely nothing is happening. When we asked for updates, the response from the prosecutor [who is also the attorney general] was to mock us publicly, saying that they cannot provide a ‘running commentary’ – that was the name of my mother’s blog,” Caruana Galizia’s son, journalist Matthew Caruana Galizia, tells The Independent.

“It appears that there is a complete cover up and a complete lack of will to investigate the motive for the assassination and the people who ordered it.”

The Maltese government offered a €1m (£880,000) reward to anyone who could provide concrete information about her murder swiftly after it occurred, but months later in July 2018, home affairs minister Michael Farrugia announced that this had resulted in “no real and tangible leads”.

Caruana Galizia’s family had earlier accused this minister of disclosing confidential information, which risked sabotaging the investigation into her death, allegations that he denies.

A European parliament delegation was sent to Malta on a fact-finding mission in November 2017. It expressed doubts over the independence of the judiciary and the police, and the ability of the authorities to carry out investigations into Malta’s most influential people.

Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat condemned the delegation, alleging it chose to meet with a disproportionate number of government critics and that its conclusions were “misguided”.

A few days after the delegation’s departure from Malta, in the early hours of 4 December 2017, police and army units raided warehouses in the port area of Marsa near Malta’s capital, Valletta. Three men – brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio, and their associate Vincent Muscat – were charged with murder, the criminal use of explosives, criminal conspiracy and involvement in organised crime.

According to police, Alfred Degiorgio spent the night before Caruana Galizia’s murder in Bidnija where he had been observing her movements from a white car on a ridge with a clear line of sight to her house – they found a cigarette butt near the parking spot with traces of his DNA. Police allege that Alfred notified his brother when Caruana Galizia left her house that afternoon, and George sent a text message to detonate the car bomb.

George and Alfred Degiorgio, and Muscat deny all charges against them and the case is ongoing – the three accused assassins were in court on 12 October for the compilation of evidence. The two brothers are also accused of money laundering offences in a separate, concurrent case brought against them when police began to look into their lavish lifestyles. Both men claim to be unemployed, yet own luxury cars and boats, make questionable overseas payments and move huge sums of cash through casinos.

Police believe the person who commissioned Caruana Galizia’s murder is still at large, and the investigation represents a major test for Malta, its judiciary and police.

On 5 October 2018, Malta’s highest court ruled that the investigation had breached the requirement of independence imposed by Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This was due to the fact that the deputy commissioner leading the investigation, as well as his government minister wife, had been subjects of criticism in Caruana Galizia’s journalism.

The magisterial investigation into those who commissioned the bombing is entirely dependent on police evidence. Caruana Galizia’s family lawyer Tony Murphy tells The Independent that this meant that the magistrate “is being asked to use the fruit of a poisoned tree in his investigation”.

In August, Caruana Galizia’s family presented a 24-page legal opinion to the Maltese High Commission in London which called for a public inquiry and accused Malta of failing to institute any inquiry into whether the state bears responsibility for her death.

Mr Muscat then ruled out a public inquiry. He said: “Investigators need to be given the space to investigate and I’m not too sure that a second public inquiry – whatever that means – can lead to a better result or not.”

But yesterday he said that that the government will not rule out opening other inquiries once the magisterial inquiry is over.

A “second public inquiry” would differ from the current inquiry, which has a narrower remit in determining who ordered and committed the murder. The family want a judicial inquiry to ask whether Daphne’s assassination could have been avoided and if there was any state complicity in it.

“There is no legal reason why a public inquiry cannot open now,” Caruana Galizia’s son says. “The international community, and especially the European Union, must not allow it [the Maltese government] to use stalling tactics.”

Lamenting the lack of coverage of the fallout from Caruana Galizia’s murder in state media and the climate for journalists in an opinion piece for the Times of Malta this week, fellow Maltese blogger Manuel Delia recounted receiving threats and accusations of treachery for talking about Caruana Galizia’s assassination to foreign media.

“All this would be metaphorical if we did not now live in a country that is different from the country we lived in a year ago. A year ago we lived in a country where a journalist was unbearably harassed. Now we live in a country where a journalist has been killed,” he wrote.