LEGAL OPINION
Is Caruana Galizia family calling for inquiry into state responsibility, AG asks
Attorney General Peter Grech yesterday published a second letter he has sent to lawyers representing the Caruana Galizia family, asking them whether it is the family’s position “that the police and Magistrate investigation may need to investigate issues of state responsibility” following the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia last year.
Would this investigation include “issues of what was known to agencies of the state and what actions were and were not taken by them?”, the AG asked.
The letter was sent to British lawyers Bhatt Murphy after the Caruana Galizia family called for a full public inquiry into her death, saying that should the call for a public inquiry be refused by the Maltese government, it was prepared to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Caruana Galizia’s family had presented a 24-page legal opinion to the Maltese High Commission in London calling for a full public inquiry into her death last October.
In an interim reply, the government had made it clear that it assumes its responsibilities as dictated by the European Convention of Human Rights with outright seriousness and assured Bhatt Murphy and the Caruana Galizia family of this.
In ulterior correspondence published yesterday, the AG asked the family to be more specific in its requests, requesting them to state whether it is “advocating a public inquiry into whether state authorities failed to protect against a known risk to life, in parallel with a criminal investigation which may include whether one or more of those same authorities were implicated in some other way”?
“Is it your and the family’s position that even a question of an Article 2 failure to protect could in the present case itself be a matter for criminal investigation?” the AG further asked.
Replying to the AG, the family, through the UK law firm, said that it remains of the view that a public inquiry is necessary to ensure that the whole truth emerges surrounding the circumstances of Ms Caruana Galizia’s assassination.
The family shall provide a considered response once it has marked the anniversary of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination, the law firm said.