Anti-graft blogger killed by huge bomb

VALLETTA: Daphne Caruana Galizia, Malta’s best-known investigative journalist, was killed on Monday when a powerful bomb blew up her car, police said, in a case that stunned the small Mediterranean island.

Caruana Galizia, 53, ran a hugely popular blog in which she relentlessly highlighted cases of alleged high-level corruption targeting politicians from across party lines.

“There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate,” she wrote in a blog published on her site just half an hour before an explosion tore into her car.

Locals said Caruana Galizia had just left her house and was on a road near the village of Bidnija in northern Malta when the bomb detonated, sending her car flying into a field.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who faced accusations of wrong-doing by Caruana Galizia earlier this year, denounced her killing, calling it a “barbaric attack on press freedom”.

He announced the FBI had agreed to help local police investigate the killing and was flying experts to the island as soon as possible.

“I will not rest until I see justice done in this case,” he said in a statement, calling for national unity.

Around 3,000 people held a silent, candle-lit vigil yesterday evening in Sliema, just outside Valletta.

“Everyone knows Caruana Galizia was a harsh critic of mine, both politically and personally, but nobody can justify this barbaric act in any way,” Muscat said.

“The only remedy for anyone who felt slandered was through the courts.” – Reuters