Brothers reverse plea to guilty in car-bomb murder trial

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

VALLETTA, Malta (AP) — The trial of two brothers charged in the car-bomb assassination of a Maltese journalist who investigated corruption in the tiny island nation began Friday, nearly five years after the slaying that sent shockwaves across Europe.

George Degiorgio, 59, and Alfred Degiorgio, 57, are charged with having set the bomb that blew up Daphne Caruana Galizia’s car as she drove near her home on Oct. 16, 2017.

Prosecutors allege that they were hired by a top Maltese businessman with government ties. That businessman has been charged and will be tried separately.

The Degiorgio brothers have denied the charges. A third suspect, Vincent Muscat, avoided a trial after earlier changing his plea to guilty. Muscat is serving a 15-year sentence.

In a Valletta courtroom Friday, Alfred Degiorgio pleaded not guilty while his brother declared that he had nothing to say. The court interpreted that as a not-guilty plea.

The brothers had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a pardon in exchange for naming bigger alleged conspirators, including a former minister whose identity hasn’t been revealed.

The bomb had been placed under the driver’s seat and the explosion was powerful enough to send the car’s wreckage flying over a wall and into a field.

A top Maltese investigative journalist, Caruana Galizia, 53, had written extensively on her website “Running Commentary” about suspected corruption in political and business circles in the Mediterranean island nation, an attractive financial haven.

Among her targets were people in then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s inner circle whom she accused of having offshore companies in tax havens disclosed in the Panama Papers leak. But she also targeted the opposition. When she was killed she was facing more than 40 libel suits.

The arrest of a top businessman with connections to senior government officials two years after the murder sparked a series of mass protests in the country, forcing Muscat to resign.

Yorgen Fenech was indicted in 2019 for alleged complicity in the slaying, by either ordering or instigating the commission of the crime, inciting another to commit the crime or by promising to give a reward after the fact. He was also indicted for conspiracy to commit murder. Fenech has entered not-guilty pleas to all charges.

No date has been set for his trial.

A self-confessed middleman, taxi driver Melvin Theuma, was granted a presidential pardon in 2019 in exchange for testimony against Fenech and the other alleged plotters. Two men, Jamie Vella and Robert Agius, have been charged with supplying the bomb, but their trial has not yet begun.

A deputy prosecutor, Philip Galea Farrugia, told the court that Theuma was asked by an unnamed person to find someone to kill Caruana Galizia. Theuma allegedly approached one of the Degiorgio brothers and a payment of 150,000 euros ($146,500) was negotiated, said Galea Farrugia.

Galea Farrugia also said that a rifle was initially selected as the murder weapon, but that was later switched to a bomb. Prosecutors also said that a cell phone — one of three that George Degiorgio had with him on a cabin cruiser in Malta’s Grand Harbor — had triggered the explosion.

A 2021 public inquiry report found that the Maltese state “has to bear responsibility” for Caruana Galizia’s murder because of the culture of impunity that emanated from the highest levels of government.

The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Dunja Mijatović, has decried the “lack of effective results in establishing accountability five years later.”

In a letter to the current prime minister, Robert Abela, the commissioner expressed the need for urgency in protecting journalists in Malta and cited ongoing defamation cases against Caruana-Galizia’s family.

Kevin Schembri Orland And Matthew Agius, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Brothers reverse plea to guilty in car-bomb murder trial

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