The three accused men had pleaded not guilty since the start of the case.
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Turnaround in the case of the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia. One of the three men accused of the October 2017 murder of the Maltese anti-corruption journalist pleaded guilty on Tuesday (February 23), for the first time since the start of the preliminary hearings.
>> We explain to you why the assassination of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana has become a matter of state
On October 16, 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was investigating corruption at the highest level in Malta, was killed by a bomb placed in her car.
Three men with already loaded criminal records – the brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio as well as Vincent Muscat – had been indicted the next day, suspected of participating in a criminal organization and of having manufactured the bomb. They had pleaded not guilty since then, until Tuesday’s turnaround, when Vincent Muscat decided to plead guilty.
“These are serious charges, murder, conspiracy, he risks life imprisonment”, launched Judge Edwina Grima to the accused’s lawyer, but the latter repeated that he was pleading guilty.
A fourth man linked to this case, Yorgen Fenech, a businessman who owns the company 17 Black, was arrested in 2019 on his yacht off the coast of Malta, while trying to flee. He is officially considered to have information about the case. Some media and the journalist’s family present him as a possible sponsor of the murder, but hearings into the charges against him have not yet started.