A Greek member of the European Parliament calls on the EP to send investigators for an independent inquiry into the brutal murder of Maltese journalist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia. The 53-year-old investigative journalist and member of the Panama Papers team was teared apart when a powerful n explosive device in her car detonated on Monday.
Wreckage of Galizia’s car next to a road in Mosta, Malta, on Monday. The powerful explosion rocked Triq il-Bidnija at around 3pm and left debris from the Peugeot 108 car strewn across the road and in a nearby field, just a short distance away from her home. One of her three sons was reportedly among the first to arrive at the scene, having rushed out of the family home after hearing an explosion. Family members, including her husband, sons and siblings arrived shortly afterwards. via Times of Malta
SYRIZA MEP Stelios Kouloglou who is also member of the Panama Papers Committee asked the EP President to send a group of MEPs to Malta to independently investigate the conditions of the crime. At the same time, Kouloglou calls for speeding up the procedures to pass a law on the protection of witnesses in public interest.
“Politicians from both sides blame me for destroying the image of the country through my articles” journalist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia told representatives of the European Parliament Committee investigating the Panama Papers on a fact-finding mission in Malta on 20. February 2017, Kouloglou added in a press release.
Galizia had said further that “the Panama Papers reveal much more than tax evasion, they reveal corruption and crimes.”
Galizia had been leading the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta, had linked Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, and his wife, Michelle Muscat, to payments from the ruling family of Azerbaijan that were hidden in secret offshore bank accounts.
She ran a blog “Daphne Caruana Galizia’s Notebook” that sometimes got 400,000 readers a day — more than the combined circulation of all of Malta’s newspapers.
“There are crooks everywhere you look now,” Daphne Caruana Galizia wrote on her blog less than an hour before she was killed. “The situation is desperate.”
Fifteen days ago she had filed a police rpeort saying that she was being threatened.
Politico had described Galizia as a “one-woman WikiLeaks” who was “shaping, shaking and stirring Europe” with her reports.
One of her sons, Matthew Caruana Galizia, described the grimmest experience he had when he ran into his mother’s car to find her ‘parts round’ him. He speaks of a “mafia state” with a “culture of impunity”.
He works at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, looks as if he will continue his mother’s struggle once he recovers from the shock. For the time being he cannot but rage against the government, the politicians and the high-ranking official in Malta.
“They tried to financially ruin my mother by filing one lawsuit after another,” he wrote on his Facebook account.
Meanwhile, the biggest group in the European Parliament, the conservative EPP has invited him next week. Leader of European Popular Party posted on Twitter.
.@EPPGroup asks for justice & requests an independent international inquiry on #DaphneCaruana 's assassination. @EU_Commission must act 1/2
— Manfred Weber (@ManfredWeber) October 18, 2017
We will no longer accept the Maltese government's refusal of transparency in the #PanamaPapers case @EPPGroup 2/2
— Manfred Weber (@ManfredWeber) October 18, 2017
In Valetta, hours after Galizia’s murder, one of the police sergeants involved in the murder investigation posted on Facebook.
“Everyone gets what they deserve, cow dung! Feeling happy :)”
Police sergeant Ramon Mifsud was suspended from duty, a special commission investigates him.
PS I reckon of this one European Commissioner from Malta who was forced to resign over corruption.
Mafia-style silencing of journalists within the European Union? An independent investigation is the least the EU has to do.
Is Malta EU’s “Russia”?
