‘Coward’: Disgraced former prime minister criticised for dropping libel suit ahead of damaging testimony

Updated to include comment from Joseph Muscat

Disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat was labelled “a coward” by lawyer Edward Debono after the former premier dropped his libel case against lawyer Christian Grima.

Muscat initiated the court case in May 2021 over a Facebook post by Grima reacting to a video of Muscat’s wife, Michelle, claiming in an interview that she was more upset than Daphne Caruana Galizia’s family when “what happened to her, happened”.

Grima, one of Muscat’s most vociferous detractors, said in reply to what Michelle Muscat wrote on Facebook: “What happened to her? Your husband blew her up. That’s what happened to her”.

Caruana Galizia was brutally murdered by a car bomb on Muscat’s watch in 2017. The public inquiry into her death concluded that the State was responsible for creating a culture of impunity that led to the investigative journalist’s death.

Commenting on Muscat’s withdrawal of the case on Monday, lawyer Edward Debono said, “The coward , the man without principles , without honesty and integrity gave up at the moment he was going to be declared a liar after George Cremona’s testimony.”

The issue involves the disgraced former prime minister stating that he was the one who called the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to help with the investigation.

Yet, Cremona, who was present in court and ready to testify had told the public inquiry that it was he, as head of Malta’s anti-terror police unit, who had personally reached out to the FBI on the day that Caruana Galizia was killed.

The disgraced former prime minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, was also summoned to testify but had not been notified before the sitting.

“Yet Schembri was in court Hall 11 and was served with the summons to appear at noon before Magistrate Asciak. Despite having been notified, Schembri did not attend the sitting,” Grima said.

Schembri was Muscat’s right-hand man in government, involved in a number of shady deals for some of which they are both facing criminal charges of money laundering and fraud, among others.

Reacting to Muscat dropping the case he initiated, Grima said Muscat was forced to accept “a declaration he (had) flatly rejected, only to accept it years later.”

Muscat deflected. He referred to Grima saying, as he has for years, that he never meant that Muscat actually detonated the bomb.

Grima was referring to the fact that, as confirmed by the public inquiry, the State was responsible for its failures in Caruana Galizia’s murder.

Muscat did not miss the opportunity to once again take another dig at a journalist killed on his watch. He compared Grima’s case with the libel suit he filed against Caruana Galizia, which he continues to pursue eight years after she was murdered.

Muscat also sued Caruana Galizia for her reporting. On social media, following his humiliation in having to drop yet another libel suit he filed against Grima, he said that he had made the same offer “to the Caruana Galizia family in the libel suit concerning the Egrant lie”.

Her family, burdened with defending a journalist who cannot take the stand and whose sources are protected, has already made it clear they will not concede: “Our position on not accepting blackmail will never change.”