Daphne Caruana Galizia’s two sons Paul and Andrew testified in front of the public inquiry board on Friday, along with Daphne’s sister Corinne Vella.
Various points of note emerged from their testimonies, with Vella speaking of the false trails, such as that of the involvement of fuel smuggling in her sister’s assassination, that were planted in order to throw journalists off the scent of the case.
Andrew Caruana Galizia meanwhile spoke of how his diplomatic posting with the foreign office was terminated soon after the 2017 election, something which led to his mother stopping her writings for two weeks.
He also spoke of how government officials had turned his mother into a target and how police presence near their home stopped right after John Rizzo was replaced as Police Commissioner.
Paul Caruana Galizia meanwhile spoke of how Justice Minister Owen Bonnici had insisted on the inclusion of former judge Antonio Mizzi on the inquiry, while also noting how Keith Schembri’s missing phone data could be cloned in the same manner that his mother’s phone data – the phone having been in the car with the journalist when the car bomb was detonated – was cloned.
Former Times of Malta Journalist Ivan Camilleri made reference to what was said in the inquiry, given that his name had been mentioned. During the inquiry, Paul Caruana Galizia listed Franco Fenech, Ray Fenech, Frank Psaila, Ivan Camilleri, Kenneth Camilleri, and Johann Cremona as people who knew details about the investigation. In response to this, Camilleri issued a statement: "I want to publicly and categorically deny that I was ever informed or privy to any details or investigations connecting Mr Yorgen Fenech to the alleged assassination plot of Ms Caruana Galizia, as reported by sections of the media. As stated in my earlier public statement last December 19, I wish to take this opportunity to re-iterate that I have never discussed, spoken to or otherwise communicated with Mr Yorgen Fenech on the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. This could not even happen since I had no such information. I reiterate my full disposal to the relative authorities to give or make any possible clarifications on what is being alleged in my regard, not least, by my former employer."
The Speaker of the House Anglu Farrugia and former Police Commissioner John Rizzo – who led the force between 2001 and 2013 – will testify during the next sitting after the New Year, while Rizzo’s successors Peter Paul Zammit and Michael Cassar will testify in the one after two days later. Lawrence Cutajar, the current Police Commissioner, will testify in a future sitting.
Judge Michael Mallia is the chairman of the inquiry board. Chief Justice Emeritus Joseph Said Pullicino and Madam Justice Abigail Lofaro are the two other members.
You can read the live commentary from the proceedings, below:
11.34am: The next sitting of the public inquiry will take place on 7th January at 2pm, with the Speaker of the House Anglu Farrugia and former Police Commissioner John Rizzo being summoned on that day, and the one after will take place on 9th January at 2pm when former Police Commissioners Peter Paul Zammit and Michael Cassar will be summoned. Incumbent Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar will be called to testify on another date afterwards.
That concludes today's proceedings.
11.30am: Lawyer Therese Commodini Cachia, on behalf of the Caruana Galizia family, says that they have prepared a list of people whom they believe should be summoned, and that the Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar should be first to testify. Chief Justice Emeritus Said Pullicino cuts in and says that the board has already decided that they will summon Speaker of the House Anglu Farrugia, former Police Commissioners John Rizzo, Peter Paul Zammit, and Michael Cassar, and Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar next.
11.25am: Corinne Vella noted that the attacks on the family pets - the most recent being when one of her dogs was poisoned in 2017 - were another means of threatening her, and the fact that nobody was ever caught and prosecuted only created further impunity.
She referred to an interview Daphne Caruana Galizia gave to the Council of Europe shortly before she was killed. She notes that what is especially poignant is that Daphne said that she had been turned into a scapegoat for the many ills in the country when all she was, was a journalist doing her job. She said that Daphne had started as a positive role model doing something that nobody had ever done before, but, 30 years later, was turned into a negative example. She is not alive to see that she is once again a positive example, Corinne concluded.
She ended her testimony.
11.22am: Libel reforms proposed which would have seen the registration of news outlets and blogs, increase in penalties, and removal of criminal libel but with the already open cases allowed to continue were done purposely to target Daphne, Corinne said.
The idea would have been that the registration of her blog would be rejected, meaning that she could not protect her sources anymore, she said. Corine Vella explains that the attempts of Konrad Mizzi's lawyer, Pawlu Lia, to label Daphne as someone who was not a journalist and hence had no right to protect her sources are attempts which point in this direction.
11.19am: She said that there were other attempts to discredit her. She said that the Office of the Prime Minister had put pressure on The Malta Independent to shed Daphne as a columnist, promising more advertising revenue if the newspaper dropped her. Daphne had continued to write as a columnist, and Corinne Vella said that when she last saw Daphne, she was writing her column for the newspaper.
11.15am: She noted that Silvio Debono had filed 19 libel cases, something which she said that Debono could do simply because he had money. She also noted that Chris Cardona and his aide Joe Gerada took a false oath so that Daphne's accounts could be frozen. She said that she knows this because a mutual friend of the source went to her house to confirm the story - that both Cardona and Gerada had been in the brothel in Germany - and that the source was ready to sign an affidavit.
11.10am: Corinne Vella said that Daphne's work environment - that of reporting on domestic corruption - must also be looked into. She noted that reporting on domestic corruption is statistically more dangerous than reporting from a warzone. She said that the lack of resources and the lack of protection for those journalists who investigate domestic corruption creates more danger for those journalists. Propaganda leaves them isolated. Even other media reporting on the story adds a layer of protection and makes discrediting the story even harder. She cites how Daphne's Pilatus Bank story had snowballed to the point that the bank itself issued a statement which threatened any media with a law suit if they published information related to them, and discredited their own propaganda story. They also threatened independent media houses with huge law suits, getting media to redact or take down these stories, leaving Daphne isolated again and stripping her of the public support of other media sharing her stories.
This was done through secret letters which could not be reported - The Malta Independent, Lovin Malta and other media houses received one on 16 October 2017, she said. Daphne never received one, but was to be threatened with a law suit herself. She never received it, and it was withdrawn hours after her death.
She said that the use and abuse of libel laws to attack Daphne should also be looked into. More than 70% of the 47 libel cases that Daphne was facing were filed by members of the government without them ever seeking alternative means. This shows the government's intention to target Daphne. She noted that one doesn't even need a case to open a libel case - one can do so out of malicious intent, tying up a journalist and their money for, potentially, years on end.
The effect is unquantifiable, she said noting that journalists are operating in an environment where they can put their own family at financial risk as well.
11.03am: Corinne Vella said that one must call into question the behaviour of the Police Commissioner. She said that she does not recall seeing or meeting Lawrence Cutajar at the scene of the crime on the day of the assassination or the day after.
"His absence from the crime scene downplays the seriousness of the crime", she said. Aside from one press conference some days after the assassination, he has been absent from all communications about the investigation, she said. She said that it seems relevant to the scope of the inquiry for him to be called to account not only for systemic failures but also for his own behaviour on 16 October 2017. "Where was he at the time of the crime? How did he come to hear it? Why did he not call a press conference on that same day? What has he done to stop leaks which could weaken the investigations?" she questioned.
She explains that after her sister was killed, there were immediately attempts to take down Daphne's blog. She noted that there were celebrations on the day of her death, that people were encouraged to forget about her. Glenn Bedingfield himself called for the memorial outside the Law Courts to be removed, which it was for two whole years under the direction of the Justice Ministry, Corinne Vella said. Daphne's death was presented as an aberration in an otherwise successful country, she said before noting that this is not really the case.
11am: She said that various members of the Prime Minister's office should be called in to testify: Joseph Muscat himself, Keith Schembri, and Kurt Farrugia - whose job, she said, was to block access to the Prime Minister not provide it. She noted that one foreign journalist said that he would be considered for an interview only if he did not ask about Daphne, money laundering, or corruption. Another journalist, Nicola Driscoll Davis, was asked by Farrugia not to ask Muscat about Daphne's assassination, she said. Glenn Bedingfield is another person who should be asked to testify, Corinne Vella said, noting that he spent much of time running his blog and targetting Daphne - something which Muscat defended as "freedom of expression".
Josef Caruana, former Orizzont editor, should also be called to testify, she said before noting that he had published an editorial calling for "traitors" to be silenced. After that, he was put on the government payroll, Corinne Vella said. Neville Gafa should also tesitfy, she added, noting that he has been very active on the internet in particular - stalking her the day before Daphne was killed, and published pictures of her in public and legitimising her being stalked - something which given the threats she was facing was negligent, if not done with criminal intent.
10.50am: This all had an effect in propagating an on-going impunity which delegitimised Daphne's work. People could seriously and genuinely ask if her work was true if nobody was prosecuted for it, Corinne explained. The most significant example of this was when she exposed Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri as having Panama companies, where Muscat chose to defend the duo - something which Corinne Vella said that she finds disturbing given the facts that have now emerged.
10.45am: The presence of Joseph Muscat on television programmes hosted by Glenn Bedingfield and government official Luke Dalli - son of now EU Commissioner Helena Dalli, where Daphne was portrayed as a witch amongst others gave the portrayal legitimacy in the eyes of the people, she said
The government did not acknowledge her work - Keith Schembri even blocked her phone number, she said. That was not simply Keith blocking Daphne, it was the government blocking the media, Corinne Vella said. She noted one particular story where a person engaged by Malta Enterprise as a consultant was blacklisted by the World Bank. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat did not respond to this story, and only did when he was questioned about - wherein he only referred to them as "internet claims" and said that they are being "looked into", she lamented.
10.40am: "If nothing changes in Malta's system, Daphne's death won't be the last", she said noting that the inquiry is important because while it can't bring Daphne back it can make sure that nobody else is killed. A risk alert should have been prompted in view of what Daphne was writing, and she said that the police should testify as to what measures were taken and what general protocol there is when there is a risk to someone's life is.
She notes that Glenn Bedingfield published a blog while sitting at the Office of the Prime Minister - trying topresent himself as something of a false equivolance to Daphne. However, he was only trying to target Daphne. She was portrayed as a propagandaist, a hate blogger, a purveyor of gossip and fake new, a witch - not only discrediting her work, but also her and making her a target for hate, Corinne Vella said.
10.38am: Corinne Vella speaks of how the Prime Minister had spoken of his shock and how he would make sure that no stone would be left unturned, but that at the same time the public inquiry had been delayed by two years and that simultaneously false stories were being planted with journalists. International journalists, she said, had asked her about fuel smuggling and she noted that she knew for a fact that Daphne had never investigated fuel smuggling - the fuel smuggling story was a red herring planted to derail the investigation, she said. She said that only one reporter had investigated fuel smuggling - Ann Marlow - and that she was still alive. Corinne says she called Marlow to ask outright whether Daphne was investigating fuel smuggling, to which Marlow's reply was in the negative
She turns to Joseph Muscat, saying that there hasn't been proper media access to the Prime Minister for two years, meaning that he is not being held to account. Daphne became the last barrier between the criminality she was uncovering and total impunity for her perpetrators, which made her the first target, Corinne said.
10.35am: Corinne Vella said that her sister Daphne had been piecing together a picture of where the lines between the government, business, and trans-national crime were blurred beyond any doubt. She recalled when Daphne had first told her that she suspected that Keith Schembri was in business for money laundering. She said that her most significant story was on the power station - something which she looked into from even before 2013 as she recognised that it was already a done deal even then.
As long as Daphne's work was not followed up by the authorities, that weakened her credibility, she said. It left her vulnerable to the criminality that she was exposing, she said.
10.30am: She refers to a meeting with Christian Kalin from Henley & Partners - noting how there were email communications between Kalin and government officials, who were using the josephmuscat.com domain to communicate, from as far back as 2014 planning to silence Daphne. Corinne said that when Daphne had met Kalin in 2017 over the latter's threat to sue her based on articles from 2014, she had questioned him as to why he wanted them removed now - to which Kalin replied that it was because an election was coming. The election had not been announced at that point, Corinne notes.
10.25am: There were various theories about why Daphne was murdered, and while it is now clear and accepted by investigators that this was because of her work, this was not always the case, she said. The false narratives promoted intensively in the wake of the murder need to be seen as deliberate attempts to derail public scrutiny of the murder and deflect attention from the perpetrators and their actual motives, Corinne Vella said. It is conceivable that high members of the Prime Minister's staff were implicated in the murder and noted that it is important that this is considered by the inquiry, she said.
She also noted that the inquiry should look into the decision that led to the government calling an early election. Given that the plot to assassinate Daphne was born in 2017, postponed when the election was called, and reactivated afterwards, she said that the timing of the election is relevant to investigate. The official reason for the election was that Daphne had caused instability in the country, she said. If instability is caused by a report, then it is not the reporter's fault, she said. She said however that this is not true - the domain registered for the campaign slogan was done in April 2017 and a month-long campaign called Four Years of Firsts followed which showed a lead-up to an electoral announcement. However, Daphne only became aware of the declarations in the Pilatus Bank safe after the domain was registered and after the campaign started - something which Corinne says she has proof of in her phone.
It should however be Joseph Muscat himself to testify in this regard, along with adviser Nicholas Wright - who advised Labour in both the 2013 and 2017 elections, she said. Other information also points to the suspicious timing, she said.
10.20am: The 2017 election marked a high against Daphne - some described it as a referendum on her work, others on her life, he said. He said that weeks after the election, his diplomatic posting in New Delhi was also terminated by the Foreign Service. Andrew Caruana Galizia was told by the Permanent Secretary not to speculate about the reason, but Andrew said that he felt that it was a clear threat to Daphne as to what the government can do. She had stopped writing for two weeks after that, he said.
Questioned by Judge Lofaro, Andrew said that the Panama Papers were what made her an investigative journalist. Asked whether she was threatened, he said that yes she had been and had been insulted and shouted at even in Valletta, leading to her not leaving the house unless she could. After 2017, he said, she was blamed even by the PN for the defeat, meaning that there was no institutional support for her anymore as the Opposition was the only body following up on her work. Her reports on the new Opposition Leader - Adrian Delia - added to that isolation that she felt, he said.
Therese Commodini Cachia asks about a point of Andrew's testimony, where he said that a person from the army used to follow Daphne. She asks what the nature of his following Daphne was. Andrew replies that the person was following her to make sure that nobody was following her - a type of counter surveillance. The person did it on his initiative and was working as an army officer at the time, doing this when he was off duty, he said. Andrew Caruana Galizia notes that the person may be willing to testify and that he was willing to name him in-camera.
He also states again that the patrols around the family home stopped immediately after John Rizzo was replaced as Police Commissioner, noting that Rizzo used to take the initiative.
That concludes Andrew Caruana Galizia's testimony. Corinne Vella, Daphne's sister, then took the stand.
10.08am: Footage of Daphne's house and of where she used to frequent taken and which appeared on pro-government media was used to help the hitmen know where she would be, the slain journalist's son said. Threats of libel cases began a new period of escalation, especially after she reported on the Panama Papers. Andrew Caruana Galizia said that these reports had changed her from merely a nuisance to a serious threat to them; Electrogas struggled to find international investment, the passport scheme was targeted by the European Commission, along with her reports affecting the hospitals sale and the American University of Malta deal as well.
Libel cases filed by government officials normally accompanied by government press releases had nothing to do with clearing their names - it was to discredit Daphne, he said, adding that the freezing of her accounts by Chris Cardona was the most egregious example. This exposes the flaws behind the libel laws, he said, noting that the inquiry should look into this.
10.05am: Turning to potential state involvement in the assassination and its cover-up, Andrew Caruana Galizia said that as more evidence emerges, this becomes all the more clear. That Daphne was a government target, he says, is "incontestable". He said that his mother had viewed her arrest on the day of silence of the 2013 election after a report by a Labour official, as a message that she could not trust the police anymore. Following those elections, the government's strategy to discredit Daphne through what Boris Nemtsov had called "criminal propaganda" was an extension of what the Labour Party used to do - with the exception that the perpetrators, figures such as Glenn Bedingield and Kurt Farrugia, were now on the public payroll.
10am: Andrew Caruana Galizia said that if it were not for his mother's murder, those who are charged at the moment would never have been charged. He said that the layers of un-investigated crime in the country fostered the impunity that led to his mother being murdered.
9.55am: Institutional failures created the conditions for my mother's death, Andrew Caruana Galizia said. The remotely triggered car bomb was the immediate cause - something unheard of in continental Europe, but carried out by people trained in this means. He said that the alleged hitmen only requested €150,000 - which shows how low they thought the risk to them was, he said.
He said that the fact that they escaped justice long enough to build the reputation that they had was to the extent that they were asked for by name.
9.54am: Andrew Caruana Galizia speaks of how the impunity in the country had facilitated his mother's violent death, and noted how people feel that the family is targetting the Labour Party and not in getting justice for Daphne.
"It is incontestable that my mother was murdered for her journalistic work", Andrew said before saying that over two years after breaking the Panama Papers scandal there has been no major investigation into her reports, and that the work that had been done - such as the Egrant inquiry - was flawed and made not even a passing reference to Daphne's death.
9.49am: He refers to Melvin Theuma's testimony, wherein Theuma - the middleman in the murder - had said that the assassination had been delayed due to a roadblock in the area, noting that this has prolonged Daphne's life for a number of days if not weeks. He questioned how much longer her life would have been prolonged had the police even provided her with minimal protection.
9.48am: In the wake of Daphne's assassination, Andrew Caruana Galizia said, her family sought advice from security experts who work with journalists at risk on how to protect themselves, and then wrote to the police asking for basic information about what measures they had put in place, such as through a threat assessment, so that they could take measures themselves. He said that they never replied, and that the Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar only phoned his father and said "Taf li ghandkom fixed point, huwx?". Andrew said that they had never received a reply and noted his belief that this was because no such assessments had ever been made.
9.45am: He said that from the outset, protection provided to the family should not be the inquiry's primary focus. Protection can be a powerful tool to safeguard life, but should not be a long-term solution, he said. Expecting a journalist to live with long-term protection - even though this was not on offer for his mother - for their lives while major criminals walk free is not right, he added.
9.44am: Andrew Caruana Galizia said that the inquiry should result in the creation of a board specifically responsible for investigating corruption, especially corruption within the State entities. He spoke of his hope that the inquiry will show that integrity is to be respected, and corruption is to be punished and hoped that it would make an example of those who are most powerful and who were involved in the murder or its cover-up.
9.40am: Andrew Caruana Galizia, another of the murdered journalist's sons, is next to take the stand. He asks to reserve the right to testify again in the future given that new evidence is emerging almost day-by-day.
9.38am: Paul Caruana Galizia then turned his sights to the Attorney General, Peter Grech, lamenting his lack of action on the leaked FIAU reports which implicated a wide-ranging corruption scandal. He states that when it came to the calls for the Public Inquiry, the family was "rubbished and derided" by the Attorney General through "condescending, patronising, and very aggressive" correspondence which even implied that the family was lying to its lawyers.
He speaks of how they had attended meetings with the government for the inquiry. He said that Justice Minister Owen Bonnici had in mind an arbitration style of inquiry - which the family rejected - before also suggesting members who were not up to scratch. One such members who Bonnici insisted on was Antonio Mizzi - something which Paul Caruana Galizia says he finds worrying given new evidence that Theuma advised Fenech to speak to Antonio Mizzi - saying that if the family accepted Mizzi, it would make his [Bonnici's] life easier.
Paul Caruana Galizia states that the inquiry is bound to reveal an entanglement of corruption, and notes that the board should consider whether the Prime Minister, his communication detail, and various subordinates were involved in the cover-up of Daphne's assassination.
Paul Caruana Galizia concluded his testimony.
9.36am: Paul Caruana Galizia laments that the police force does not have basic technology and it took a foreign entity - the FBI - to analyse data and charge the two Degiorgios and Vince Muscat - the three men who have been charged with carrying out the assassination. He described this situation as a "disgrace", before also noting as an example that the police's economic crimes unit only has one qualified accountant in it.
9.32am: He states that Peter Paul Zammit, Michael Cassar, Lawrence Cutajar, and Ray Zammit - the last four Police Commissioners - have a case to answer for as they never took action on her writings.
9.28am: Paul Caruana Galizia now speaks about the police protection that the family used to have. He said that protection was not necessarily provided through a fixed point; in 2006, the police used to run frequent patrols through their road in Bidnija. He said that everything had changed when John Rizzo was removed as Police Commissioner by the new government in 2013. However, he noted, it is known that the best way to protect a journalist is to follow up on their work - and said that when his mother had broken the news about the Panama Papers, the police failed her as she was not given added protection and her work was not picked up on. This lack of action signalled, he said, that she was "fair game".
9.26am: He notes how Kenneth Camilleri had promised bail for the Degiorgios and Vince Muscat, telling the middleman that there was a hearing scheduled for the 22nd - Paul says that court records show that there was indeed a hearing scheduled for that day with Judge Giovanni Grixti who, he noted, had granted bail to the trio in the parallel money laundering case as well.
9.23am: "There was a more subtle type of cover-up", Paul Caruana Galizia states. He speaks of Glenn Bedingfield and states that he had written 597 posts that mentioned Daphne in their title in what used to be his blog - this all while he was employed as a person of trust by the Prime Minister, adding that this was "relentless".
9.22am: He speaks of Melvin Theuma next and his trip to Castille, stating how Keith Schembri welcomed him at the Office of the Prime Minister and made him an espresso. He targets Principal Permanent Secretary Mario Cutajar, noting how he had first released a statement that Theuma had not been given a job and that there was a public call, but then changed it.
9.20am: "We still don't have a full and complete picture about how much they damaged the investigation; but what I can say is that in the weeks after the murder we fielded lots of questions about fuel smugglers", Paul says
Moving onto Keith Schembri's lost phone and refusal to give over his cloud passwords, he laments that investigators had managed to access his mother's phone despite the fact that it was in the car with her, and states that if it were possible for her phone to be accessed, then a suspect's phone should also be accessed.
9.18 am: He lists Franco Fenech, Ray Fenech, Frank Psaila, Ivan Camilleri, Kenneth Camilleri, and Johann Cremona as people who knew details about the investigation. The line Schembri pushed with journalists and news editors was that Daphne's death was related to fuel smuggling - which, he says, to the family was clearly never true as Daphne had never investigated fuel smuggling.
9.15am: He notes that it is known that Schembri was present in security briefings, meaning that he is aware of the details of the case. Joseph Muscat knew that Schembri was a suspect in May 2018, Paul Caruana Galizia said.
He said that knowing that Schembri and Fenech were great friends, that Fenech owned 17 Black, and that Schembri was a suspect, one must question why the Prime Minister continued to include Schembri in the police briefings.
9.12am: Theuma said multiple times under oath that Fenech was kept abreast with the investigation by Keith Schembri, which Fenech also said. The latter was asked by his lawyer about this and he said that Schembri was informing him one week after the murder - when Fenech was not on the radar, suggesting that Schembri knew about the murder plot, Paul Caruana Galizia said. Why would he inform him otherwise, he questioned.
9.10am He notes that recent evidence shows that the highest levels of the country's executive failed to stop the assassination but may also have been involved in it as well.
He refers to notes received by Yorgen Fenech through Adrian Vella from Keith Schembri to pin the murder on Economy Minister Chris Cardona. He notes that this shows that Schembri wanted to cover up the assassination and also shows that the use of the Economy Minister as the scapegoat was deemed to be realistic enough as a possibility. He states that it shows a very detailed strategy about how to make Melvin Theuma - the middleman who has received a pardon in exchange for his testimony - lose credibility, showing an in depth knowledge of the case before certain details were made public.
9.07am: Paul Caruana Galizia states that he has organised his evidence in line with the terms of reference of the inquiry with regards to state involvement in the assassination or its cover-up
9.05am: the board has entered the Court hall, and Paul Caruana Galizia, Daphne's son, is the first to take the stand.
So far, in past sittings a number of the assassinated journalist's sisters have testified, as have her husband Peter and their son Matthew. In addition, a journalist had also testified behind closed doors, however information that could link to his or her identity are not allowed to be published.
The terms of reference are to investigate independently and to report to the Prime Minister on the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia on the 16th October 2017 and on the events preceding, concomitant with, and following upon, the assassination with a view to, among other things, to determine whether any wrongful action or omission by, or within, any State entity facilitated the assassination or failed to prevent it.
It will also determine, among other things, whether the State had and has in place effective criminal law provisions and other practical means to avoid the development of a de facto state of impunity through the frequent occurrence of unresolved criminal acts and to deter the commission of serious criminal offences, backed up by law enforcement machinery for the prevention, suppression, investigation and punishment of serious breaches of the law. Find out more here