Family says verdict denies the slain reporter ‘justice she deserves’
A Maltese jury on Wednesday found Yorgen Fenech not guilty on charges he ordered and paid for the car bomb that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist whose work targeted corruption inside the circle of then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. The acquittal, in a Valletta courtroom closed to cameras under standard Maltese criminal-trial rules, closed the last prosecution to arise from an assassination that shocked Europe.
Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed on Oct. 16, 2017, by a car bomb detonated as she drove near her home. In the years before her death, she published investigative reports naming people in Muscat’s inner circle whom she accused of holding offshore companies disclosed in the Panama Papers leak. She also reported on figures in the opposition and in Maltese business, and faced more than 40 libel suits at the time she was killed.
Fenech was indicted in 2021 on charges of complicity and criminal conspiracy. He had been involved in a consortium that won a contract with the Maltese government to build a power station. He pleaded not guilty, and the jury returned its not-guilty verdict on both counts. The Associated Press, whose reporting was distributed by NPR, said Fenech made no comment after the verdict; demonstrators heckled him as he walked into a waiting car outside the courthouse.
Other defendants in the case have been convicted. In 2022, brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio pleaded guilty to carrying out the slaying and were each sentenced to 40 years in prison. In 2025, Jamie Vella and Robert Agius were each sentenced to life in prison, the maximum penalty under Maltese law, after being convicted of complicity in the murder; prosecutors had accused them of supplying the device used in the bombing. Vincent Muscat pleaded guilty in 2021 and was sentenced to 15 years. A self-confessed middleman, taxi driver Melvin Theuma, was granted a presidential pardon in 2019 in exchange for testimony.
Fenech was arrested in 2019 as he was sailing away from Malta on his yacht. The arrest helped unleash a series of mass protests that culminated in the resignation of then-Prime Minister Muscat.
Caruana Galizia’s sons were in the courtroom when the verdict was read out but left without commenting. In a statement later posted to Facebook, the family said the verdict denied Caruana Galizia the “justice she deserves.”
“Nine years after Daphne’s brutal assassination, the institutional failures that enabled her murder remain unaddressed and unreformed,” the family statement said. “Lasting justice means no person should ever face the same risks again.”
“Our country failed to protect Daphne,” the statement added. “It owes it to her to prevent other lives being lost.”
An independent public inquiry published in 2021 concluded that the Maltese state “has to bear responsibility” for the assassination due to a culture of impunity that “emanated from the highest levels of government.”