Magistrate Rachel Montebello has asked the police to investigate several leaks concerning messages that came from murder suspect Yorgen Fenech’s mobile phone.

In a decree delivered on Monday, Montebello said that exchanges that appeared in articles published by Times of Malta reflected information that had been made available exclusively to the parties in court.

The data from Fenech’s mobile phone was extracted by Europol experts and submitted in court last November in the compilation of evidence linked to the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder.

The magistrate, in agreement with the prosecution and defence, ordered that the data be made available to all parties in the case but banned its publication or distribution to third parties.

Fenech’s lawyers complained over articles that appeared in the press, which quoted exchanges that came from this cache of information.

The magistrate found that the published articles were in contempt of court and ordered the Police Commissioner to investigate all parties in the case who had access to the restricted data and who may have distributed it to third parties.

She also ordered the court registrar to initiate procedures against the authors of the stories published in Times of Malta.

An article that appeared in Illum, over which Fenech’s lawyers had also complained, did not contain extracts from the restricted data and was excluded from the probe.