The European Court of Justice has been asked to turn down the nomination of former justice minister Edward Zammit Lewis to the post of judge in a letter it received from Maltese civil society group Repubblika.

In its letter, a copy of which was sent to the media on Tuesday, Repubblika citing WhatsApp messages he had exchanged Yorgen Fenech, who stands accused of being a mastermind in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The letter was signed by Repubblika president Vicki Cremona, who told the Article 255 panel that Zammit Lewis’s appointment to the European Court of Justice would tarnish the Court’s reputation and compromise its responsibility to be perceived as a protector to the rule of law.

“The candidate maintained an intimate correspondence with Fenech. At the time when it had become clear that Fenech had both the motivation and the resources to have ordered the killing of Daphne Caruana-Galizia, the candidate texted, over an extended period of time, dozens of messages to Fenech.”

Repubblika said Zammit Lewis had already publicly defended Mizzi and Schembri when they were exposed by the Panama Papers for having set up offshore accounts.

Zammit Lewis had accepted Fenech’s hospitality when travelling by private jet together with then prime minister Joseph Muscat and staying at an Evians-les-bains hotel owned by Fenech. “Despite at first denying this fact, records in Femech’s phone, captured by the police, contradicted the candidate’s version of events.”

Cremona said Zammit Lewis had been handpicked by Prime Minister Robert Abela as “a form of compensation” for the prime minister’s earlier decision to leave him out of his cabinet of ministers.

“We find it unacceptable that the prime minister now uses posts on the bench in Luxembourg as gifts they might give for political purposes,” the letter says.