Two brothers have been jailed for 40 years after they pleaded guilty to the murder of an anti-corruption journalist in Malta.
Hours earlier at the start of the trial in a Valletta courthouse, George Degiorgio, 59, and Alfred Degiorgio, 57, had entered not guilty pleas.
They were charged with planting the bomb that blew up Daphne Caruana Galizia’s car as she drove near her home on October 16 2017.
Ms Caruana Galizia investigated suspected corruption among political and business circles in the tiny European Union nation, which is a financial haven in the Mediterranean.
“This is an important step forward, to deliver justice in a case that represents a dark chapter in Malta’s history,” Prime Minister Robert Abela said shortly after the sentencing.
One of her sons, Matthew Caruana Galizia, told reporters: “I’m relieved that they have been convicted and sentenced. Now it’s about the remaining cases,” he said, referring to prosecution of other defendants.
But he said the five years it took to reach this stage of justice for his mother was “far too long”.
Prosecutors alleged that the brothers were hired by a top Maltese businessman with government ties. That businessman has been charged and will be tried separately.
In the run-up to the trial, the Degiorgio brothers had denied the charges. A third suspect, Vincent Muscat, avoided a trial after earlier changing his plea to guilty. Muscat is serving a 15-year sentence.
At the start of the trial, Alfred Degiorgio pleaded not guilty while his brother declared that he had nothing to say which the court interpreted as a not guilty plea.
During the prosecution’s opening arguments, the state argued they had evidence involving mobile phones that would link the defendants to the bombing.
The brothers had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a pardon in exchange for naming bigger alleged conspirators, including a former minister whose identity has not been revealed.
The bomb had been placed under the driver’s seat and the explosion was powerful enough to send the car’s wreckage flying over a wall and into a field.
A top Maltese investigative journalist, Ms Caruana Galizia, 53, had written extensively on her website, Running Commentary, about suspected corruption in political and business circles in the Mediterranean island nation, an attractive financial haven.
Among her targets were people in then-prime minister Joseph Muscat’s inner circle whom she accused of having offshore companies in tax havens disclosed in the Panama Papers leak. But she also targeted the opposition. When she was killed she was facing more than 40 libel suits.
The arrest of a top businessman with connections to senior government officials two years after the murder sparked a series of mass protests in the country, forcing Mr Muscat to resign.
Yorgen Fenech was indicted in 2019 for alleged complicity in the murder, by either ordering or instigating the commission of the crime, inciting another to commit the crime or by promising to give a reward after the fact. He was also indicted for conspiracy to commit murder. Fenech has entered not guilty pleas to all charges.
No date has been set for his trial.
A self-confessed middleman, taxi driver Melvin Theuma, was granted a presidential pardon in 2019 in exchange for testimony against Fenech and the other alleged plotters. Two men, Jamie Vella and Robert Agius, have been charged with supplying the bomb, but their trial has not yet begun.
