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Two bombmakers have been jailed for life in Malta for their involvement in the contract murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist who prosecutors said was killed to stop her reporting.
The six-week trial in a Valletta court was widely seen as a critical test of the EU member state’s ability to stand up to corruption and organised crime.
Caruana Galizia was murdered outside her home by a car bomb in October 2017.
After establishing her website, Running Commentary, in 2008, Caruana Galizia had revealed a series of major Maltese political scandals. These include the establishment of secret offshore companies by Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, key figures in the government of then-prime minister Joseph Muscat.
The murder, which led to waves of protests as well as a public inquiry, also led to the collapse of the government. Muscat resigned in 2019 over his handling of the case — and over the revelation of financial links between Mizzi and Schembri’s offshore companies and Yorgen Fenech, the businessman accused by prosecutors of commissioning the murder.
A public inquiry reported in 2021 that the government had “failed to recognise the real and immediate risks” to the life of Caruana Galizia and “failed to take reasonable steps to avoid them”.
Pavol Szalai, head of the EU desk of Reporters without Borders, said the trial “once again highlighted the Maltese state’s failure to dismantle — at every stage — the complex scheme devised to kill a journalist, and the difficulty of untangling it”.
Robert Agius and Jamie Vella were given a whole-life sentence for complicity in the murder, after being found guilty by a jury last week of supplying the car bomb that killed Caruana Galizia.
Vella was also sentenced for his role, along with Adrian Agius and George Degiorgio, for the murder of Carmel Chircop, a lawyer who was shot dead in October 2015.
Degiorgio and his brother Alfred were already serving 40-year sentences after being convicted in 2022 for their roles in the murder of Caruana Galizia, whose son Paul is now an investigative journalist at the Financial Times. Two other men, Vincent Muscat and Melvin Theuma, have previously admitted their roles in the case as part of plea bargains.
Fenech, who was arrested in 2019 by the Maltese armed forces aboard his yacht shortly after it left a port on the island, is expected to face trial in the next 12 months. He was released on bail earlier and denies the charges.
A statement on behalf of Caruana Galizia’s family said: “We hope that today’s sentences will be a step towards a safer world for journalists by signalling to potential killers that there are heavy penalties to pay when a journalist is murdered.”
