The defence in Yorgen Fenech's trial by jury closed its case in half a morning on Thursday, calling just three witnesses before resting, as the proceedings moved into the final stage with the prosecution beginning its closing submissions, telling jurors that the evidence presented throughout the trial proves his involvement in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

After hearing from dozens of prosecution witnesses over nearly two months, the defence opted for a brief witness list comprising an Office of the Prime Minister official, an Electrogas representative and a Bank of Valletta representative, although the latter was ultimately prevented from giving key evidence after a court ruling.

Several people who were indicated on the defence's witness list, including former prime minister Joseph Muscat, Chris Cardona, Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà and former president George Vella, were ultimately not called to testify.

With the defence case concluded, prosecutor Anthony Vella opened the prosecution's final address to the jury, arguing that the evidence presented throughout the trial demonstrates Fenech's involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

"This is Yorgen Fenech's trial, and nobody else's," Vella told the jurors, urging them to focus exclusively on the evidence placed before the court.

He began by recalling conversations allegedly recorded by middleman Melvin Theuma, in which Fenech is heard telling him: "No one can touch me. You're the only one I'm worried about," and "Our strength is money."

Vella argued that these were not statements made for a courtroom audience, but spontaneous conversations between two men who believed they were speaking in private.

"The evidence will guide us," he said, adding that the recordings capture Fenech "admitting guilt and involvement in the murder."

A central theme of the prosecution's submissions was the reliability of Theuma's testimony, which the defence has repeatedly attacked throughout the trial.

Vella acknowledged that Theuma was an accomplice, but stressed that his account did not stand alone.

Before bringing the case to court, he said, investigators had ensured that Theuma's version of events was corroborated by multiple sources, including the secret recordings, financial payments, information passed between the conspirators and testimony from convicted hitman Vince Muscat, known as il-Koħħu.

"Why would an outsider with nothing to do with the murder need to tell anyone to keep people involved in a murder under control?" Vella asked the jury.

He argued that Theuma's evidence was supported "over and above" what the law requires, reminding jurors that accomplice testimony can legally be relied upon when backed by independent evidence.

Vella repeatedly returned to the recordings between Theuma and Fenech, describing one exchange as particularly significant.

He reminded jurors of a conversation in which Theuma tells Fenech: "You gave me the €150,000."

According to the prosecution, Fenech's response was simple: "I remember."

"Those words carry enormous weight," Vella said.

"He does not deny it. He does not ask, 'Why are you telling me this?' He says, 'I remember.'"

The prosecutor argued that this amounted to an admission that Fenech had handed over the money referred to by Theuma.

Vella also highlighted another discrepancy between Fenech's testimony in court and the statement he previously gave to police.

He said that while Fenech told the jury Theuma had informed him "they want €120,000", his earlier police statement recorded Theuma as saying: "Your share will be €120,000."

"The words 'your share will be' implicate him," Vella argued.

"He ended up lying on the witness stand."

The prosecutor invited jurors to compare the version of Fenech they saw giving evidence in court with the man heard speaking in the secretly recorded conversations.

"When someone takes the stand, they know the charge against them, they know the evidence, they know where the danger lies," Vella said.

"The pressure is there."

By contrast, he argued, the conversations with Theuma were spontaneous because Fenech believed he was speaking privately with an accomplice rather than addressing a jury.

"You have heard two versions of Yorgen Fenech," Vella told the panel.

"The Yorgen Fenech who took the stand, and the Yorgen Fenech the evidence knows all too well."

The prosecution also challenged one of the defence's key arguments concerning recordings allegedly held by Theuma on a USB drive.

Vella reminded jurors that Fenech had testified that Theuma approached him with recordings relating to former chief of staff Keith Schembri.

However, instead of keeping the recordings, making a copy or handing them to his lawyer, Fenech admitted that he gave the USB to Schembri.

"In his own words, he said: 'I gave it to him. I got rid of it,'" Vella said.

He questioned why someone who claims Schembri was responsible would hand potentially crucial evidence directly to him.

"If this was evidence that could reveal the real mastermind, you keep it. You make a copy. You put it somewhere safe," he said.

"But Yorgen Fenech does the opposite."

Vella also referred to another phrase that featured prominently during the prosecution's cross-examination of Fenech.

"Your fingerprints are all over this case," he said, arguing that the accumulated evidence pointed consistently towards the accused.

He cited recordings in which Fenech discussed passing messages, calming Theuma, providing money and even exploring ways to help the imprisoned hitmen obtain a mobile phone.

In one recorded conversation played during the trial, Fenech is heard telling Theuma: "Leave it to me. I'll see if I can work something out so I can get the hitmen a mobile phone in prison."

Vella asked the jury why someone with no involvement in the murder would concern himself with such matters.

"There is only one answer," he said.

"We have to use our common sense."

"There is no other way of looking at it except that he was involved."

Vella urged jurors to focus on the secretly recorded conversations made by middleman Melvin Theuma, describing them as the clearest evidence of Fenech's involvement in Caruana Galizia's murder as he continued the prosecution's closing address in the afternoon.

Vella said that Theuma could choose what subjects to raise but could not manufacture Fenech's responses.

"Thank God Melvin recorded the conversations in which Yorgen admits his guilt," Vella told jurors.

The defence had previously urged jurors not to become Theuma's "lifebuoy", but Vella argued that the recordings themselves served that purpose.

"Melvin's lifebuoy is the recordings. He made them so that he would be believed. They want you to forget these recordings because they are the clearest evidence," he said.

Vella acknowledged that the defence could argue that Theuma selectively recorded conversations, steered discussions towards particular subjects or asked leading questions. But he said there was a limit to what Theuma could manufacture.

"He could not get inside the other person's head and plant a memory that was never there," Vella said.

"He could raise the subject, but he could not put the answers into his mouth. The answers came from Yorgen Fenech himself."

The prosecution also pushed back against the defence's argument that Theuma's chronology of the alleged commissioning of the murder was undermined by evidence that Fenech travelled to the United States in April 2017.

Vella said Theuma had never provided an exact date but placed the alleged instruction around three weeks before the 2017 general election.

He argued that jurors had not been shown hotel bills or card records establishing precisely where Fenech was throughout his stay and said there remained a window at the beginning of April when the alleged meeting could have occurred.

He also recalled Theuma testifying that days after Fenech allegedly gave him the order, Fenech told him Sandro Craus from Castille would contact him.

"And that is what happened. Melvin's account is not contradicted by the actual happenings."

Vella also rejected attempts to portray Theuma as the more powerful figure in his relationship with Fenech.

He reminded jurors that Theuma had described himself as feeling "like a mosquito next to a giant" and said he carried out even mundane errands for Fenech, including buying bread.

"Theuma is not a saint," Vella said, but argued that this did not mean his evidence should be discarded.

Turning to Theuma's presidential pardon, Vella described it as a means of breaking omertà and challenged the defence's suggestion that Theuma had lied to protect somebody else.

"Melvin is not getting anything by protecting anyone," he argued. "If anything, he has something to lose."

The prosecution also highlighted evidence that Fenech had attempted to purchase weapons through the dark web, including two hand grenades, two Glock pistols with suppressors, two automatic rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Another central argument concerned the language Fenech used when communicating with Theuma.

Vella quoted messages from November 2019 in which Fenech told Theuma: "I'll fight to the end to get our way," "I'll do everything I can for us to avoid it" and "We'll get through this, and God willing, we'll get out of it for good."

"Someone who isn't involved doesn't speak in the plural," Vella argued.

He also referred to Theuma telling Fenech that Alfred Degiorgio, Vince Muscat and George Degiorgio did not know him and that his name had never been mentioned.

Vella argued that an innocent person would have questioned why three men involved in a murder were being discussed with him in the first place. Instead, he said, Fenech appeared concerned with whether they knew his identity.

"Why would someone ask whether three men who had just killed someone knew his name - unless that person was involved?" he asked.

Vella also addressed the defence's attempt to point towards former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri as an alternative mastermind.

He accepted that the defence was entitled to advance that theory, but argued that it still had to account for the evidence concerning Fenech.

"We have not heard recordings of Keith Schembri, because they do not exist," Vella said.

He again highlighted the exchange in which Theuma referred to the €150,000 and Fenech replied: "I remember."

The prosecution suggested that friendship and commercial ties could explain why Fenech may have sought to protect Schembri after the murder, referring to a recording in which Fenech spoke about "what Keith Schembri did for me".

Vella also questioned why Fenech, having chosen to testify, had not sought confrontations with the people he now says implicated or betrayed him.

He noted that Fenech spent around four hours giving evidence before facing approximately three days of prosecution cross-examination and argued that he had failed to address significant parts of the recordings or clarify elements of his police interrogation.

"Now that Fenech had the stand, I expected him to ask for a courtroom confrontation with Keith Schembri, or with Melvin Theuma," Vella said.

"He had the chance to confront the man who told him, 'You ordered the murder, you paid for the murder' - and he yet did choose not to."

He said the same applied to Adrian Vella and Johann Cremona. The prosecution's closing address was ultimately interrupted by a legal dispute when Vella began reading chats between Theuma and Mario Degiorgio.

The defence objected, arguing that neither participant had been questioned about the chats during the trial and that Degiorgio had not even been called as a prosecution witness.

Judge Edwina Grima noted that the material had never been brought to the jury's attention.

"You should have asked Melvin Theuma to testify about it when he was on the stand. We are hearing this chat for the first time today," she said.

The prosecution maintained that the chats formed part of the acts and had been extracted from a device identified by witness Josef Gerada, while the defence argued that their contents amounted to "documentary hearsay" and carried no probative value.

With jurors outside the courtroom as the arguments continued, Grima decided to rule on the matter on Friday, adjourning proceedings.

Earlier in the day, the defence completed its evidence after calling just three witnesses.

The first was John Abela, a director within the Office of the Prime Minister's General Support Services, who exhibited documentation relating to visitor records and organisational structures at Castille.

The defence also called Electrogas legal head Chris Frendo, who testified about a cybersecurity breach within the company in 2017. Frendo explained that someone had gained unauthorised access to Electrogas's IT systems and carried out keyword searches including "Keith Schembri", "17 Black", "Dubai", and other politically sensitive terms.

He said the company eventually filed a police report after fragments of emails and contracts began appearing in the media.

The defence's attempt to present banking records through Bank of Valletta representative Sarah Rausi was unsuccessful after the court ruled that the documents had never been included in the official acts of the case.

The judge held that a witness could not testify on the basis of documents that were not already part of the evidence, despite objections from the defence.

With no further witnesses called, the defence rested its case.