Man charged with journalist’s murder claims frame-up
One of the men charged with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia has claimed to be the victim of a frame-up and accused the police of trying to find evidence to justify his arrest after the fact.
Caruana Galizia was killed in a car bomb attack as she left her home in Bidnija last October.
Police believe that George Degiorgio, known as Ic-Ciniz, had remotely triggered the bomb which killed the journalist, from his boat, the Maia, near the Grand Harbour after allegedly receiving the signal from his brother Alfred, known as il-Fulu, who acted as a spotter in Bidnija.
In separate criminal proceedings, the two men and Vincent Muscat, known as il-Kohhu, are charged with the murder of the journalist.
George Degiorgio’s lawyer, William Cuschieri, filed a court application yesterday morning, asking the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction to declare that Degiorgio’s right to a fair hearing had been breached as the police were angling for evidence to justify his arrest.
Degiorgio is claiming that despite the prosecution exhibiting footage of the vessel Maia entering and leaving the Grand Harbour, one of the officials presenting it had testified that he was not morally certain that the vessel shown was in fact the Maia.
The police had requested the court to nominate experts to identify all the vessels which entered and exited the Grand Harbour between 230pm and 330pm on 16 October 2017 and compare them with a photograph of the Maia.
It was “evident that the prosecution not only did not have proof that Degiorgio was on board the particular vessel, but did not even have proof that it was the particular vessel that appeared on the footage.” This was not a case where the court needed to appoint a technical expert as “here we are talking about a boat that is unrecognisable…” Cuschieri said, dismissing the request as “nothing but a suggestive question so that the experts confirm the pretext upon which the accused was arrested.”
“The behaviour and request of the prosecution, which took place now around ten months after his arraignment under arrest on a supposition without any evidence, is nothing but an attempt at a frame up in his regard,” said the lawyer.