George and Alfred Degiorgio were found guilty on Friday of murder and criminal conspiracy. A third man had already been sentenced to fifteen years in prison for the assassination of the anti -corruption journalist.
Le Monde with AFP
Two brothers, George and Alfred Degiorgio, accused of having murdered Maltese journalist Anticorruption Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017, were sentenced on Friday October 14 to forty years in prison. “They declare themselves guilty,” said their lawyer earlier, Simon Micallef Stafrace.
His clients, prosecuted for murder and criminal plot, were suspected of having made, posed and exploded the bomb having killed the journalist in his car, who denounced in her blog, Running Commentary, endemic corruption in this little archipelago Mediterranean, a former British-colony entered the European Union in 2004. His death at 53, on October 16, 2017, had strongly shaken the smallest state in the European Union and horrified its neighbors.
“There are corrupt everywhere”
Several representatives of Associations for the Defense of Freedom of the Press, including Reporters Sans Frontières and the European Center for Freedom of the Press and the Media, were present at the trial, in Valletta. The journalist had been killed near her home just a few hours after posting this message: “There are corrupt everywhere. The situation is desperate.”
The Degiorgio brothers said they were ready last year to involve a former minister in exchange for a grace, which was finally refused. George Degiorgio had already confessed the assassination for the first time during an interrogation in July, calling it “just from the business”.
a third man already condemned
A third man involved in this murder, Vincent Muscat, who pleaded guilty last year, had been sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The rich businessman suspected of having commanded the murder, Yorgen Fenech, has not yet been tried. He denies any involvement.