Malta’s PM accused of being ‘complicit’ in killing of journalist
THE son of the Maltese investigative journalist who was killed in a car bomb has accused the prime minister and senior politicians of being “complicit” in her murder.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, who exposed corruption among Malta’s political elite, was killed on Monday when a massive bomb blew her car apart shortly after she left her home in the north of the island. Matthew Caruana Galizia said his mother was “assassinated because she stood between the rule of law and those who sought to violate it”, adding that “she was also targeted because she was the only person doing so”.
He had a blunt message for Joseph Muscat, Malta’s prime minister, as well as the former British colony’s attorney-general, its police commissioner and senior politicians. “You are complicit. You are responsible for this,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Mr Caruana Galizia gave a graphic account of how he rushed from his home to find the smoking remains of his mother’s car, which was blasted off the road and into a field near the village of Bidnija.
“I am never going to forget running around the inferno in the field, trying to figure out a way to open the door, the horn of the car still blaring, screaming at two policemen who turned up with a single fire extinguisher to use it.
“They stared at me. ‘I’m sorry, there is nothing we can do’, one of them said. I looked down, and there were my mother’s body parts all around me. I realised it was hopeless.”
Described as a “one-woman WikiLeaks”, Ms Caruana Galizia had accused Mr Muscat’s wife, Michelle, of taking money from Azerbaijan’s ruling family and hiding it in a secret bank account in Panama. The claims,
which were strongly denied by Mr Muscat, were the latest in a string of scandals on the island based on information gleaned from leaked records of the law firm Mossack Fonseca – the socalled Panama Papers.
Experts from the FBI and the Dutch police were expected to start searching the car’s wreckage yesterday. The forensic teams were invited in by Mr Muscat, who told parliament: “I have given them no limits.” (© Daily Telegraph, London)