Labour MP Glenn Bedingfield said that Daphne Caruana Galizia "attacked people, humiliated them, and called them anything under the sun."

Testifying in the public inquiry into the murder, Bedingfield said that Daphne and people who support her believe they have the right to speak while others don't. "There are people who have the right to attack and those who don't," he said.

Bedingfield used to run a blog to counter the one that the slain journalist had before she was killed in a car bomb on 16 October 2017.

"She had an open season all year long to attack everyone she wanted," Bedingfield stated. "Freedom of speech is open to everyone", he said before noting that he had put his career on the line to stand up to her writings, and had been threatened - even with bombs - for doing that.

Judge Michael Mallia is leading the inquiry, with the other two members of the board being chief Justice Joseph Said Pullicino and Madam Justice Abigail Lofaro.

The inquiry was set up to determine whether any wrongful action or omission by, or within, any State entity facilitated the assassination or failed to prevent it and to establishing 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.

Jason Azzopardi and Therese Comodini Cachia are representing the Caruana Galizia family.

Follow the minute-by-minute proceedings below. Please refresh for latest updates

11.21am: The next sitting will be next Wednesday at 2pm, and will see the testimony of Gloria Beacon, Petra Caruana Dingli, and Andre Camilleri.

11.20am: That concludes Corinne Vella's intervention.

11.19am: Vella takes the stand. The question is over research she had submitted on posts by Neville Gafa, some of which showed posts which he had made about Caruana Galizia's personal life or attacking her. "In your research did you ever come across these pictures anywhere else?", Mallia asks "I haven't looked into that - I downloaded those from his Facebook on the day I presented them", Vella states although she notes that she can research it. She recognises one image as having also been posted in one of the secret groups which The Shift News exposed. However it is noted that the first date of publication does not indicate where the photograph originated from.

11.16am: Before we conclude however, Judge Mallia states that he would like to ask Corinne Vella a question.

11.15am: That question brings Bedingfield's testimony to a close.

11.14am: He is now being asked about the Castille security arrangements. He states that the army handle security, and that the Prime Minister has his own security detail. He points out that one either needs an access card or has to be let in by someone. "I don't know anyone who gave instructions for persons in the secret service to follow journalists, or anyone else", Bedingfield states, in answer to another question.

11.12am: Bedingfield has now been on the stand for two hours, making this one of the longest testimonies of this public inquiry.

11.10am: Azzopardi asks about a blog post that Bedingfield had uploaded which showed Daphne's car and number plate. He states that he had uploaded the post because people were bothered by her going round taking pictures. Questions are asked about a certain remark with this post - "be careful". "Was this meant for Daphne?", Judge Mallia asks - Bedingfield replies in the negative, and that it was meant for people to be careful because their pictures were being taken.

11.03am: Madam Justice Lofaro comes back to Bedingfield's "equal and opposite reaction" reasoning, and asks why that had extended to the television screens when she was not involved in the television industry. Bedingfield doesn't seem to have much of an answer to this, at one point suggesting that he didn't know whether she was involved in producing certain television programmes behind the scenes - a suggestion which drew several shakes of the head and "u ajma"s from those present. He now argues that her blog's reach was such that the content got to everyone - more than a television programme would.

11.01am: Azzopardi asks about the makeshift memorial to Caruana Galizia at the foot of the Great Siege Monument in Valletta. "That monument doesn't bother me - in fact I suggest that she should have her own monument", he replies. "So you never wrote 'good riddance' after the monument was cleared?", Azzopardi asks. "I don't know", Bedingfield replies, but adds that under oath he can say that the monument did not bother him.

10.58am: He now comes to last November, when Melvin Theuma and then Yorgen Fenech were arrested in connection with the murder, and asks for what the reaction was. "Like anyone else, I was worried and shocked - but I saw the fact that Theuma and Fenech had been caught because of the police's work", he replies.

10.57am: Azzopardi now mentions news which emerged in November 2018 about 17 Black, and again asks whether this was discussed at parliamentary group level. Again, Bedingfield states that he is not the person in the Labour Party who sees how to deal with these things. 17 Black was Yorgen Fenech's Dubai-based company.

10.55am: Judge Said Pullicino warns Azzopardi to "stick to the subject".

10.54am: Azzopardi asks about October 2018, where international media reported that Cardona had not been telling the truth about meeting one of the Degiorgios. "I am not the person in the Labour Party who is responsible for taking action against people for allegations against them", Bedingfield replies.

10.52am: Azzopardi now reels through certain events across the last legislature. He states that in April 2018, Chris Cardona was mentioned in connection with the murder of Caruana Galizia. Azzopardi asks whether Bedingfield had asked for something to be done after this allegation emerged, or whether this was "business as usual". Bedingfield recalls that he didn't do anything particular. Azzopardi asks whether the news was discussed at parliamentary group level. Bedingfield states that he doesn't think that it was.

10.50am: Jason Azzopardi now rises to ask questions. He asks when he last spoke to Keith Schembri. "When there was the American University of Malta controversy", Bedingfield replies. He can't recall the exact date - but it was the most recent controversy. This event was over a proposed extension for the University, which he had protested vociferously against, and which was eventually rejected.

10.45am: Bedingfield is asked about the newsworthiness of personal pictures such as those of Caruana Galizia at a cafe being uploaded. He points out that it has the same newsworthiness as posts on him, for instance, going to the theatre alone. "You're a person of trust though", Comodini Cachia states. "So shall we live in a country were persons of trust can't express themselves?", Bedingfield claps back.

10.42am: Comodini Cachia asks whether his blogposts had a chilling effect on government critics. He says Daphne's writings had the same effect on Labour Party exponents such as himself - some which he still faces today. Some people even used to spit at him on the street, Bedingfield said.

10.41am: Comodini Cachia now centres on whether he used to write blogs while he was at Castille. Bedingfield replies that he did but that there is a difference between working hours and being at the office. He states that he used to write them during breaks, and not while he was working.

10.37am: Comodini Cachia comes back to her previous question, and asks why he had made Daphne the personal subject of his articles. "A lot of Daphne Caruana Galizia's writings were personal as well. That's what an equal and opposite reaction means", he replies.

10.36am: Bedingfield says he spoke to Chris Cardona, Konrad Mizzi, and others when Daphne would write articles about them. He states that he had believed Cardona over Caruana Galizia when it came to allegations such as those involving a German brothel.

10.35am: Comodini Cachia points out that since his blog began until a few months after Caruana Galizia had been assassinated, Bedingfield had written 579 posts with 'Daphne' in the headline, and 402 others with 'Caruana Galizia', in the headline. She asks what the rationale behind this amount of posts was. "She was a person who publicly commented about everything - she never shied away from writing, and I never shied away from writing. It was an equal and opposite reaction", he replies. "It was a personal initiative", he says when asked whether he was instructed to write such posts.

10.29am: He is now asked how his work connected with that of Keith Schembri. Comodini Cachia reproduces a screenshot of an email from Caruana Galizia's blog, where Bedingfield had asked a Michaela - who Bedingfield identified to be lawyer Michaela Spiteri - to translate something for Schembri's office. That email had gone to the wrong person and ended up in Daphne's hands. Bedingfield states that his job was to answer PQs, but that if someone asked him to help on something, he wasn't exactly going to say no.

10.27am: Bedingfield is asked about his work in Castille and about who his direct superior. He states that he was responsible for coordinating parliamentary questions, but that he never really had a superior to whom he passed the answers of the question onto before publication. He had the final say in this regard.

10.24am: Bedingfield again faces questions on his blog. He says that he would moderate comments sometimes, and that there were occasions where he accepted comments and then removed them afterwards.

10.18am: He is asked about the timing of the appearance of banners questioning what had happened to Daphne's laptops and some of his and Josef Caruana's writings. "I wasn't involved [in putting up the banners] - but I remember when I saw them, I thought I'm going to get the blame for them", he replies.

10.15am: Bedingfield is asked why he removed his blog completely, rather than just stop writing. Bedingfield states that he is thinking of opening a new blog, "hopefully this Easter". "I have permission, right?", Bedingfield adds, sarcastically.

10.13am: Comodini Cachia asks who had written the script for the segment on 'Taghna t-Tnejn'. Bedingfield that it was his decision along with his co-presenter Luke Dalli. He is asked about where the "witch" comparison had emerged. Bedingfield states that he had first seen the term in an article written by Lino Cassar in it-Torca.

10.11am: Therese Comodini Cachia now rises to ask questions. She is warned by the board that the questions have to be related to the inquiry. "I don't want political stories", one of the board members is heard.

10.10am: Questions now shift to Bedingfield's period as presenter of the programme 'Taghna t-Tnejn', where the programme used to have a segment called 'El Fava' which depicted Caruana Galizia as a witch. "I was drawn out as a vulture - as many things. It was a caricature", Bedingfield says about the segment. "You know what happened to witches? They burnt them at the stake," Judge Lofaro replies.

10.08am: He notes that he did not agree with certain things about Taste Your Own Medicine - he did not agree with the fact that the blog was anonymous, and that he did not necessarily disagree with the message in the blog.

10.06am: Madam Justice Lofaro asks whether he had uploaded pictures of Daphne and her family. Bedingfield states that he had and that sometimes she was accompanied by her husband, but cannot confirm whether these pictures included her children. He said that this was in retaliation to her own writings. It was an "equal and opposite reaction", he said. He clarifies that he had never taken the pictures himself, but that he had received them from various people.

10.04am: Mallia reads out from the blog post, quoting him questioning why the Caruana Galizia family was hiding Daphne's laptop and questioning whether the family actually wanted the murder to be solved, or whether they wanted it unsolved so that "they could continue to blame it on the Labour Party". Bedingfield replies that at no point did he imply there that the family was involved in the murder, although the board points out that he had said that the family was trying to see that the murder isn't solved.

10.01am: Judge Mallia confronts Bedingfield with a post he had written, saying that he had implied that the family was involved in the murder. Bedingfield denies it: "I dont think that her family was responsible - as if. I don't believe it."

10am: Bedingfield states that he never saw Yorgen Fenech at Castille. Every other OPM official has testified that same thing so far. He states that he did not know that Fenech and Schembri were friends. The board points out that they had heard that Fenech was coming and going to Castille everyday, but Bedingfield insists that he had never seen Fenech then.

9.59am: Judge Said Pullicino asks what Bedingfield's relationship is or was with Keith Schembri. "A working one", Bedingfield states.

9.58am: He is now asked about third parties on his blog. He states that he did used to accept guest posts, but cannot recall the names of people. He would also moderate the comments on the blog. "I used to remove comments which I thought were unfair or over the limit", he says.

9.55am: "You have a lot of weight in the party. You're a person who acts, you've said it yourself. I would have imagined you would have tried to speak to them about it, at least asked for it to be discussed in the parliamentary group," Judge Said Pullicino tells him. "In hindsight, yes. But I never spoke to them about it," Bedingfield replies. "Not even on a political level?," Madam Justice Lofaro chimes in. "No," he replies.

9.52am: Bedingfield stated that there were no discussions in the parliamentary group about the murder, although notes that there may have been higher up - he wasn't part of Cabinet at the time.

9.50am: One of Daphne's sisters is continually passing remarks as Bedingfield speaks. She is tapped on the shoulder by a court attendant, presumably to tell her to stop.

9.48am: "How can you discuss...there weren't discussions that you can say....everyone was shocked...the Prime Minister made public declarations, but no, there weren't any discussions which I was involved in", Bedingfield states.

9.46am: Said Pullicino asks what his reaction was when news of the assassination emerged. "Of sadness" (Tad-dwejjaq), he states. He is asked about discussions at a government levels or with government figures. Bedingfield says that he didn't work at Castille at the time because he resigned from there in June 2017 so he couldn't say what the exact reaction was. He points out however that the Prime Minister was "shocked" at the news.

9.44am: Bedingfield is handed a number of blogposts he wrote about Caruana Galizia and asked to identify them. "It's not my writing style", Bedingfield states, although he opens the possibility that it was a guest post. "The language of the article is particularly worrying", Judge Said Pullicino points out.

9.40am: Judge Said Pullicino asks why he had stopped his blog. Bedingfield states that he was elected to Parliament in 2017, and the added workload had meant that he could not keep up with it. He states that it was his own decision to close it.

9.39am: The judges are now asking questions to the witness.

9.38am: "She had an open season all year long to attack everyone she wanted," Bedingfield states as he comes to a conclusion. "Freedom of speech is open to everyone", he said before noting that he had put his career on the line to stand up to her writings, and had been threatened - even with bombs - for doing that.

9.37am: He points out that Opposition Leader Adrian Delia had called Caruana Galizia a "bicca blogger", questioning therefore whether PN exponents were also part of this campaign against Daphne. "Did they also foster a climate of intimidation or is it just us?", Bedingfield said.

9.35am: Bedingfield states that it had been implied by several witnesses that he had somehow contributed to Caruana Galizia's assassinations through his writings. "Here is the contradiction - it is then said that Ms. Caruana Galizia was killed because she wrote about someone. Or as Simon Busuttil said, 'she was killed because she was going to uncover them'. This declaration contradicts the impression that was being given that it was I who created a climate for her to be assassinated", Bedingfield states.

9.32am: Bedingfield now moves on to speak about allegations that Peter Caruana Galizia had made concerning the police. He calls the assertion that police had passed on information to Bedingfield for his blog a lie. He quotes an adjournment speech from earlier this week, where Michael Farrugia said that Caruana Galizia had fixed point protection between 2008 and 2010.

9.27am: Bedingfield states that Daphne had never opened a libel case against him, and that nobody had ever opened such a case against him for anything on his blog.

9.26am: Bedingfield now presents a list of people whom he stated that Daphne Caruana Galizia had attacked. He says that the list included children, and even a person who ended up being suicidal because of her writing. He notes that even his daughter had ended up on her blog, simply because she had gone to buy a sandwich on the catamaran while going on holiday.

9.24am: "Another unfounded allegation - Peter Caruana Galizia said that he (Bedingfield) was employed in the Prime Minister's office specifically to attack Daphne Caruana Galizia - not true", he states. He points out that while he started working at Castille in 2013, his blog started in 2015. "Had my intention been to specifically attack her, I would have set up the blog straight away," he states.

9.23am: Bedingfield testifies that Peter Caruana Galizia's first lie was his assertion that he (Bedingfield) had set up the blog 'Taste Your Own Medicine' and began writing anonymously. He said that this is untrue - his only blog was that which appeared under his own name. He said that he had set this up on his own initiative because the Labour Party had a "deficit" in this regard. He said that this blog was political in nature, but that once he had launched it, Caruana Galizia had increased the attacks against him - and he had attacked back.

9.20am: "With her and people who support her, there are those who have the right to speak and people who don't. There are people who have the right to attack and those who don't," Bedingfield continues.

9.19am: "Caruana Galizia attacked people, humiliated them, and called them anything under the sun," Bedingfied begins. "When someone reacts to her writings though, the impression was - and still is - given that when someone retaliates by writing in the same manner, we are said to be attacking freedom of speech", Bedingfield states.

9.17am: Judge Mallia points out that contrary to other witnesses, Bedingfield had asked to testify himself. Bedingfield states that he is here to rebut the lies which had been heard in certain previous testimonies, especially that of Peter Caruana Galizia - Daphne's husband. He said that the board had been given the impression that he had sat down to plot a campaign against Daphne Caruana Galizia - something which he states is not true.

9.16am: Bedingfield now takes the witness stand.

9.15am: Therese Comodini Cachia presented a social media post uploaded by Nigel Vella after his testimony last Wednesday - which was an attack on Jason Azzopardi. She doesn't have any comment to make with it, but says she felt it would be pertinent given that Vella "didn't talk that much" during his testimony.

9.13am: Judges entered the courtroom.

9.09am: Glenn Bedingfield is at the law courts waiting to testify.

8.52am: The sitting is scheduled to start at 9am.