Five years after the fatal bomb attack on journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, two brothers have been found guilty of murder in Malta. A judge sentenced the two to 40 years in prison on Friday, on the very first day of the trial in the capital, Valletta.
Caruana Galizia was one of the best-known journalists on the EU island state and researched and published for years on the sometimes far-reaching corruption in the country. The attack caused a sensation and outrage nationally and internationally.
After a few hours of negotiations, the brothers surprisingly pleaded guilty to killing the journalist with a car bomb on October 16, 2017. If the jury found it that morning, the brothers could have been sentenced to life in prison. Before the two, a third hitman and a taxi driver had already made confessions. The taxi driver claimed to have acted as an intermediary between the killers and a well-known businessman who had commissioned the assassination.
The accused is said to be businessman and millionaire Yorgen Fenech, who is also accused in the case. Fenech denies the allegations and claims that influential politicians were behind the assassination. He has been in custody since November 2019 after a failed attempt to escape.
The millionaire is waiting for his trial to begin. He denies the allegations and claims that influential politicians were behind the assassination. According to media reports, the two convicted brothers announced when they left the courtroom that they would now reveal the whole truth.
As the investigators reconstructed, the three men placed the explosives under the driver’s seat of the journalist’s car and let it detonate remotely. One of the brothers triggered the detonator on a boat with a cell phone and threw the phone into the sea.
The President of the European Parliament from Malta, Roberta Metsola, wrote on Facebook after the verdict was announced that the guilty verdict does not mean justice for Caruana Galazia and her relatives, but it is “a small step”. Metsola wrote that those behind the murder and those who protected the perpetrators must now be held accountable.