Two direly needed inquiries

There are two direly needed inquiries on the horizon, both of which are unprecedented and both concern the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, whose grim anniversary was marked this week.

One of those inquires the government is in a position to stop dead in its tracks but is at least pretending to entertain, and the second is that it cannot stop although it has tried.

The first is the resounding national and international call for a public inquiry into the assassination of the journalist; the second is the inquiry being led by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s rapporteur on the murder, Pieter Omtzigt.

We will start with the need for the public inquiry into the murder. Over and above everything such an inquiry needs to cover is how the murder could have been prevented and, to our minds, that murder could have been prevented if the stories the journalist had published had actually been investigated by the authorities as they should have been.

That is because, had there been such investigations, those investigations would have served as a buffer between whoever it was that commissioned the heinous act and the journalist herself.

From a journalistic standpoint, and, more importantly, from the standpoint of the national interest, it needs to be established why, exactly, those scoops, particularly those that implicated people in the highest echelons of power, were never investigated. It needs to be determined why, when reports of misconduct of those at, and close to, the epicentre of power were drawn up that they were left to gather dust on successive police commissioners’ desks.

The calls for such an inquiry – which would uncover what really happened as well as determine whether that life could have been saved – were spearheaded by the murdered journalist’s family and their solicitors, who have since engaged in a tit-for-tat volley of questions with Malta’s Attorney General.

The government has said it would be open to such an inquiry, but has floated the opinion that it would unnecessarily overlap with the ongoing magisterial inquiry into the murder. But perhaps, just perhaps, the two inquiries could actually complement each other, if they are done properly.

Not only the victims, the journalist’s family, but also international bodies of high repute and Malta’s opposition party – which is demanding a board of inquiry composed of a number of people known for their integrity and honesty with the chairman to be appointed by the Prime Minister after a two-thirds majority vote in Parliament – are all demanding this inquiry and the government is doing itself and the country no favours by delaying or denying it.

And while the government plays a game of ‘tag, you’re it’ through its Attorney General with the family’s lawyers, the governing Labour Party plumbs new depths when it accuses the Opposition Leader of seeking to undermine the country’s institutions to ‘please the extremists within his own party’. And just when one thinks it can sink no lower, the PL observes that the Opposition Leader himself had been the subject of allegations by Caruana Galizia but had never submitted himself to an investigation.

Now once he is calling for such an inquiry, it pretty much stands to reason that he would willingly answer to it if called – anything short of that would be utterly ridiculous.

While the government may dispense platitudes about the public inquiry, its party’s statement and the resistance being put up by the Attorney General say otherwise.

Now for the inquiry that the government cannot stop but unsuccessfully tried to stop via its MP, former home affairs minister Manuel Mallia, at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

The rapporteur is due to visit Malta in the coming week to collect evidence into the murder on an unprecedented scale, and with an unprecedented remit to receive information from anonymous sources and to protect the identity of anyone who provides any such information.

The Dutch MP is apparently deeply concerned about the way matters have panned out since the assassination, and has expressed concern on ‘many issues concerning the rule of law in Malta, the progress made in investigating the murder, and the attitude and behaviour of certain senior public officials’.

He is to draft this report on three working assumptions: That the means employed to commit the murder indicate it was planned and premeditated long in advance; that the person or persons ultimately responsible for the assassination were motivated by her investigative work, either already published or on which she was engaged at the time of her death and; that the three arrested suspects were most likely acting under instructions, since there is little to suggest that they had any personal motive to kill her since they had not been the subject of her investigations.

He intends organising a hearing for first-hand information from experts in different fields about the investigation and the murder, as well as to visit Malta to speak to the authorities and other ‘relevant interlocutors’.

PACE’s Legal Affairs Committee has authorised him to receive information from anonymous sources and to protect the identity of anyone who provides such information. Omtzigt is outside Malta and outside Maltese jurisdiction. He is protected by parliamentary immunity and has a strong track record on working with and for whistleblowers.

He can be relied upon to protect sources. We strongly encourage anyone with useful information to come forward and contact Pieter Omtzigt’s team.