Trial exposes web of power, fear and silence around Daphne’s murder

Eight years after Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated by a car bomb outside her Bidnija home, the jury trial of Yorgen Fenech, accused of complicity in the crime, has offered the most detailed public examination yet of the relationships, conversations and manoeuvres that surrounded the murder and its aftermath.

While jurors will ultimately decide whether Fenech is guilty of complicity in commissioning the assassination, weeks of testimony have already painted a stark picture of the intersection between political power, business interests, organised crime and state institutions in Malta during one of the country’s darkest periods.

The proceedings have not only focused on the mechanics of the alleged plot. They have also revealed how influential figures reacted as the investigation closed in, exposing networks of communication that extended from Castille to Malta’s criminal underworld.

Among the most striking evidence has been testimony from witnesses describing then-prime minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri’s apparent anxiety in the months before Fenech’s arrest in November 2019.

Jurors heard that Schembri summoned Johann Cremona, one of Fenech’s former business partners, to Castille, asking to be informed if Fenech made contact. According to the witness, Schembri appeared visibly worried, fuelling long-standing questions about the nature of the relationship between Malta’s most powerful public official at the time and the businessman accused of commissioning a journalist’s murder.

The testimony adds another layer to evidence already established through previous criminal proceedings showing frequent communication between Schembri and Fenech in the period leading up to and following the assassination. Cremona said that, on the eve of Schembri’s long-awaited testimony, Fenech’s defence lawyers met him.

The trial has also highlighted the central role played by Melvin Theuma, the self-confessed middleman who received a presidential pardon in exchange for revealing the alleged conspiracy.

Jurors heard recordings secretly made by Theuma, in which conversations with Fenech allegedly touched on the investigation, political developments and concerns about witnesses. The recordings have formed a significant part of the prosecution’s case, although defence lawyers have repeatedly challenged their interpretation and reliability.

Evidence has revisited the alleged financial arrangements surrounding the murder plot, including payments to the Degiorgio brothers and Vince Muscat, known as il-Koħħu, who have all admitted involvement in the assassination. Their testimony, together with corroborating evidence presented over several years of related proceedings, has been revisited before the jury as prosecutors attempt to establish Fenech’s alleged role as the mastermind behind the crime.

Another recurring theme has been the culture of loyalty and silence that seems to have protected powerful figures from scrutiny.

Witness after witness has described relationships that blurred the lines between government, major business interests and individuals later implicated in serious criminal offences.

A former police officer who later served on disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat’s security detail, Kenneth Camilleri, told jurors that in the summer of 2018, then-chief of staff Keith Schembri instructed him to accompany Johann Cremona to meet Melvin Theuma to “calm him down”. Instead, Theuma allegedly asked Camilleri to help secure bail for George and Alfred Degiorgio, provide them with “the bag”, which he understood to mean cash, and “get rid of them”.

Camilleri testified that he was shocked by the requests, repeatedly tried to contact Schembri afterwards, and, when he eventually sought to brief then-prime minister Joseph Muscat, was cut short with the words: “The less I know, the better.”

He told the jury he later stopped going to work because he feared for his life and believed Schembri was involved because it was Schembri who had sent him to meet Theuma before abruptly cutting off contact.

The trial is serving as a reminder of the broader context in which Caruana Galizia was killed.

At the time of her assassination on 16 October 2017, the journalist was investigating alleged corruption involving senior government officials, the Panama Papers, the controversial Electrogas power station project and links between business figures and politicians.

Many of those investigations would later become central to criminal inquiries, public inquiries and parliamentary scrutiny, while the independent public inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s assassination concluded in 2021 that the Maltese State had created “an atmosphere of impunity” that enabled the murder.

Although the jury’s task is limited to determining Fenech’s criminal responsibility, the proceedings have inevitably revisited many of the institutional failures identified by that inquiry.

The trial has retraced the arrests of the hitmen, the breakthrough provided by Theuma’s testimony, Fenech’s attempted departure aboard his yacht before dawn on the day of his arrest, and the political resignations that followed.

For many observers, the evidence has reinforced the extent to which the assassination cannot be viewed as an isolated act of violence but as the product of an ecosystem in which business, politics and criminality became dangerously intertwined.

Whatever verdict the jury eventually reaches, the proceedings have already become one of the most significant moments in Malta’s legal and political history. They have exposed, under oath and in open court, conversations and relationships that for years were the subject of speculation, leaks and investigative reporting.

For Caruana Galizia’s family, the trial represents another chapter in a search for justice that has stretched across almost a decade. For Malta, it has become a reckoning with the structures of power that the journalist spent her career investigating, and which, according to the public inquiry, ultimately failed to protect her.