Despite having released seven out of ten men arrested on Monday on police bail, investigators are still actively looking at their possible links with the car bomb that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia on 16 October.

Sources say investigators are particularly focusing on one of the seven, who they have described as “one of Malta’s most dangerous criminals.”

The ten were bagged during a huge police and army operation on Monday. Three men, brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio, and Vince Muscat, were arraigned on murder charges on Tuesday evening. They pleaded not guilty.

The others have been released on police bail, which is valid for three months.

None of the ten men spoke a word during police interrogations, the sources say.

With regard to the three men who were arraigned, the sources said investigators were trying to link them to other car bombing cases. The police believe that they are linked with at least three recent cases.

Investigators believe that the ten form part of a criminal organization that was contracted to carry out the hit on Caruana Galizia. Links to the Libyan oil smuggling operations are still not being excluded at this stage. 

Italian newspaper La Repubblica yesterday reported that the murder plan was hatched two months before the hit. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said that the bomb was placed at 2am in the rented car the journalist was using.