Why Jason Azzopardi won’t repeat claims of a police tip-off to journalist’s murder suspects in court
In order to protect multiple “police sources,” Jason Azzopardi says he will not be repeating claims made in Parliament that a police sergeant had tipped off one of the suspects in the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
He was being interviewed on the latest edition of INDEPTH by The Malta Independent editor-in-chief Rachel Attard.
Last Monday in Parliament, Azzopardi made the explosive allegation that Police Sergeant Aldo Cassar called one of the three murder suspects hours before they were raided at a shed in Marsa, which led to their arrest. The raid took place on 4 December 2017.
Police and the secret services vehemently deny the claims, saying the sergeant in question had been subject to disciplinary action over something unrelated.
Azzopardi repeatedly questioned why action had been taken against him when the order was made and why an inquiry was not launched into any possible leaks by the police to the accused.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered by a car bomb just metres away from her Bidnija residence on 16 October. Since then, police have arraigned three men in connection with the homicide, although it is widely accepted that those who actually ordered the murder are at still at large.
Azzopardi, who represent the Caruana Galizia family parte civile in the murder trial, has been accused of making the claims about an alleged tip-off in Parliament in order to take advantage of his parliamentary privilege.
When questioned about whether he would repeat the allegations outside of Parliament or whether he would be presenting them in court, in view of him being involved in the case, Azzopardi stressed that there were certain legal requirements to raise such an argument in court. Such requirements would require him to divulge his sources, who he maintains are more than two and from within the police force.
PL MP Robert Abela has ‘challenged’ Azzopardi to repeat the accusations outside of Parliament, adding that he (Azzopardi) would not because he knows them to be untrue.
In reply, Azzopardi has said that it is a fact that on 5 December police inspectors interrogated one of the three men how they knew to get rid of certain key evidence right before they were raided by law enforcement, throwing mobile phones into the sea. One of the suspects had also scrawled a close person’s mobile number on one of his hands.
Inspector Keith Arnaud, a lead investigator, made an appeal for politics to be left out of the case. On this note, Azzopardi explained that he did not make any legal arguments or comments in Parliament, but rather political ones. His main issue was why no inquiries were launched into the possibility that the criminals had been tipped off.
Azzopardi reveals that he did not tell PN leader Adrian Delia, and did not feel the need to do so as in other cases about the contents of his parliamentary speech where he repeated the allegations.
Azzopardi also delves into questions on why the general election was called a year early, adding that the l-aqwa żmien domain name had been purchased months before the murdered journalist’s most damning allegations about the prime minister and his possible offshore dealings. He questions whether it had anything to do with the cache of leaked documents sent to the slain journalist regarding the Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR and the local company Electrogas. It has been reported that at the time of her murder, she was working on her biggest story ever. Azzopardi therefore believes she was murdered for political reasons.