The blogger and why it took a bomb to stop her
Whistleblower Daphne Caruana Galizia was a thorn in the side of the Maltese elite, writes Paul Peachey
After the failed threats, a mountain of legal cases and the denunciations from the prime minister downwards, it took a bomb to silence Maltese blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Caruana Galizia – killed on Monday by a car bomb close to her home in northern Malta – was not a woman to hold back in her criticism of Malta’s elite.
Her sustained criticism of Joseph Muscat, the prime minister, over his links to shell companies exposed by the so-called Panama Papers prompted him to call a general election to end uncertainty and preserve the island’s economy.
Mr Muscat won the election in June, but Caruana Galizia did not relent in her opposition on her blog, which was read by 400,000 people on a good day, according to the Politico website. She gave evidence to the inquiry investigating her claims about Mr Muscat and her last message on Twitter referred to a member of his staff as “that crook”.
Her campaign against corruption spanned the political divide. Since the election, she turned her fire on the new leader of the opposition, Adrian Delia, with stories that resulted in four libel cases. They will be dropped now that she is dead .Mr Muscat and Mr Delia denounced the killing. “Everyone knows Caruana Galizia was a harsh critic of mine, politically and personally, but nobody can justify this barbaric act in any way,” Mr Muscat said.
The 51-year-old had reported threats made against her, according to local media. Burning tyres were left against the door of her house 11 years ago in a murder attempt, her former newspaper reported yesterday.
“The capacity of chippy Maltese men to bear grudges against women for a lifetime never fails to amaze me,” she said in an exchange with a former senior minister. “Join the queue.”
Caruana Galizia’s death led to protests for justice outside the country’s law courts. Her last words on her blog, “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate”, were daubed on the side of a road. In a sign of the contrasting emotions that she provoked, a police officer who posted a message on Facebook saying that “Everyone gets what they deserve” was suspended from his post.
“Now what was many times foretold, threatened, wished for by people who despised her has finally happened,” the
Malta Independent, a former employer, wrote in its editorial, adding that “no one was safe from her barbs”.
“There is a sort of inevitability in what happened. It makes Malta resemble all the more a Central or Latin American country where journalists are kidnapped, killed or just disappear,” it read.
Even when her targets employed expensive lawyers to push back against her claims, she refused to be cowed. She posted emails online from an exchange with one of the world’s leading libel firms, Mishcon de Reya, after its client took exception to stories about corruption over the government-sanctioned sale of Maltese passports to foreigners.
She gave evidence to EU lawmakers during a year-long investigation into the Panama Papers and the use of offshore jurisdictions to launder money and avoid taxation.
Malta was the only EU country with a serving minister named in records leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
Her son Matthew, a journalist and a witness to the aftermath of the blast, worked as part of the international team that published the leaked documents.
He blamed the failure of the country’s institutions for the death of his mother.
“We are a people at war against the state and organised crime, which have become indistinguishable,” he wrote on Facebook.
The magistrate investigating her death was replaced yesterday after the family pointed out that Caruana Galizia had criticised him in one of her blogs.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has offered a €20,000 (Dh86,335) reward for help in solving her murder.
Despite offers of assistance from the Dutch police and the FBI, the investigation will test a Maltese government blamed by Mr Caruana Galizia along with a “long list of police commissioners” for encouraging a “culture of impunity”.
On her blog, Caruana Galizia shared that scepticism. When a supporter encouraged her to keep working because the truth prevailed, she replied: “It doesn’t you know, not really.”