[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]On 19 January, Index on Censorship joined a letter calling on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to appoint a Special Rapporteur to monitor the investigation into the murder of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed by a car bomb on 16 October 2017.
Joint open letter to the members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe: Call for a PACE Special Rapporteur on Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination and the crimes she exposed
Dear Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
Daphne Caruana Galizia was by all accounts Malta’s most widely read and influential journalist. She had an immeasurable impact on Malta’s politics over the course of her thirty-year career and single-handedly uncovered some of the country’s biggest corruption scandals, exposing Maltese institutions for their unwillingness to pursue powerful and well-connected members of the country’s business and political class.
Known by her hundreds of thousands of readers in Malta and elsewhere simply as ‘Daphne’, she was assassinated on 16 October 2017 in broad daylight by a remote-controlled car bomb as she left her home in Malta.
Only months before, Daphne Caruana Galizia had uncovered systemic government corruption implicating senior members of her country’s government, showing how offshore structures exposed in the Panama Papers were used to receive and launder kickbacks on the sale of Maltese passports and process unexplained payments from members of Azerbaijan’s ruling family.
In a January 2018 report of a European Parliament fact-finding mission to Malta, the country’s Commissioner of Police confirmed on record that no police investigations took place into any of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s Panama Papers revelations. The senior government figures implicated in her investigative reporting remain in public office.
In a context of complete impunity for the high-level corruption Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed and the legal, financial and other threats she faced from figures in or close to government before her assassination, her killing has underlined in shocking fashion the extent of corruption and rule of law failings in Malta. The threat to the country’s liberal democracy and press freedom is a real one: Malta has slipped sixteen places in a single year in Freedom House’s latest global ranking.
Daphne Caruana Galizia’s violent death and the impunity for the crimes she revealed have serious consequences in the most fundamental areas of the work of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
At the winter session in Strasbourg, Daphne Caruana Galizia’s three sons will be calling for a special rapporteur to be appointed whose mandate will involve monitoring the ongoing murder investigation in Malta, investigating the broader circumstances surrounding Daphne Caruana Galizia’s death, and ensuring there is no impunity for the perpetrators of the crimes Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed.
We ask you to heed their call and to support their efforts in every possible way in the interests of all of us who work to see justice and bring an end to impunity.
Yours sincerely,
Ricardo Gutiérrez, General Secretary, European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
Antoine Bernard, Deputy Director General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Patricia Moreira, Managing Director, Transparency International
Barbara Trionfi, Executive Director, International Press Institute (IPI)
Carles Torner, Executive Director, PEN International
Tom Gibson, EU Representative, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Anna Bevan, Assistant Director, International News Safety Institute (INSI)
Ernest Sagaga, Head of Human Rights and Safety, International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
Joy Hyvarinen, Head of Advocacy, Index on Censorship
Natalia Yerashevich, Director of the Secretariat, Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum
Katie Morris, Head of Europe and Central Asia, ARTICLE 19
Antonia Byatt, Interim Director, English PEN
Dr Lutz Kinkel, European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
William Horsley, VP and Media Freedom Representative, Association of European Journalists (AEJ)
Yesterday marked three months since the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Gathering outside the Maltese embassy in Malta House, London, members from Index on Censorship stood with seven other free speech and criminal justice organisations to mark the anniversary and call on the Maltese government to ensure justice is served. I spoke with Hannah Machlin, project manager for Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom platform, Cat Lucas, programme manager for English Pen’s Writers at Risk programme, and Rebecca Vincent, UK bureau director for Reporters Without Borders for this special podcast.
During the vigil, participants left bay leaves — which in Greek mythology are a sign of bravery and strength — outside the embassy in a sign of solidarity with supporters in Malta, while a statement from Caruana Galizia’s family was read out.
Caruana Galizia was killed on 16 October 2017 when a bomb placed under her car exploded as she was leaving her home in Bidnija, Malta. Sixteen days prior to the fatal attack, Caruana Galizia filed a police report saying she was being threatened.
Through her investigative journalism career, Caruana Galizia exposed corrupt politicians and other officials, uncovering a number of corruption scandals in the Panama Papers. Caruana Galizia also investigated links between Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to secret offshore bank accounts, to allegedly hide payments from Azerbaijan’s ruling family. Her work on government corruption also led to early elections in Malta in June 2017.
At the time of her death, Caruana Galizia was subject to several libel suits and counts of harassment. Her assets were frozen in February 2017 following a request filed by Economic Minister Chris Cardona and his EU presidency policy officer Joseph Gerada.
Her murder was condemned by many from the international community, with a previous vigil held on the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, where nearly 60 free expression advocates gathered, calling for justice and an open and transparent investigation into her death.
Malta is currently ranked 47th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 World Press Freedom Index, and 47th out of 176 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2016.
Seven reports of violations of press freedom were verified in Malta in 2017, according to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project. Five of those are linked to Caruana Galizia and her family.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1516205516926-5b43be63-70a3-7″ taxonomies=”18782″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Doughty Street Chambers has surfaced concerns about the investigation being carried out by Maltese authorities into the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist, writer and anti-corruption activist murdered on 16 October when her car exploded.
In its urgent legal advice to the family of Galizia, Doughty Street Chambers, an international specialist law firm, raised issues around the independence of the investigation, which they said was in a “clear and serious breach of Article 2” of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees an effective investigation.
Doughty Street barristers Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC and Jonathan Price said “we are of the firm view that Malta is in flagrant violation of the Article 2 investigative duty and thus in breach of its obligations under the ECHR”, and that “from the information available at this stage it appears highly likely to us that the Maltese authorities have also violated other human rights of Ms Caruana Galizia and the bereaved family, under Articles 2, 3, 8, 10 and/ or 13 ECHR (and indeed under other international human rights treaties and domestic law).”
A further requirement of Article 2 is that the investigation should safeguard the legitimate interests of the next of kin. However, Galizia’s family members have been learning of key developments through grossly inappropriate channels: Twitter accounts belonging to politicians and news headlines.
“The advice from leading legal experts confirms that Malta is in breach of its obligations under European law to investigate the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia thoroughly and fairly”, said Joy Hyvarinen, head of advocacy at Index on Censorship. “The advice raises extremely serious questions about the Maltese police, and Index believes that external, independent investigators must be appointed urgently.”
The lawyers called for swift action to be taken by the authorities in Malta to immediately remove the deputy commissioner from his role and to apologise to the family “for the failure to appropriately update and involve them in the investigation, and alter the way in which information is provided to them to comply with Article 2’s requirements.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1512749485797-9de444c0-8566-10″ taxonomies=”18781, 18782″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed on 16 October 2017 when a bomb placed under her car exploded as she drove away from her home in Bidnija, in the north of the island of Malta. A specialist in investigating corruption, her work included exposés of the shady secret deals, uncovered in the Panama Papers, that show how politicians and others hide illicit wealth behind secret companies. Her allegations about government corruption led to early elections in the country last June.
Index on Censorship’s project manager for Mapping Media Freedom, Hannah Machlin, spoke with RTK, a Catholic radio station in Malta, about Caruana Galizia’s murder.
Doughty Street Chambers has surfaced concerns about the investigation being carried out by Maltese authorities into the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist, writer and anti-corruption activist murdered on 16 October when her car exploded.