Valletta, Dec. 4 (IANS): Ten people have been arrested in Malta over the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Prime Minister said on Monday.
Galizia, who was a relentless critic of corruption and organised crime in the country, died in October in a powerful car bomb blast yards from her home.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said in an early morning press conference that there was “reasonable suspicion” that the arrested individuals were involved in the murder. The police have 48 hours to question the suspects and decide whether to prosecute or release them. At least eight of the suspects were Maltese citizens, the Guardian reported.
The arrests followed an operation that lasted several weeks and involved police, the armed forces and security services assisted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the European Police Office.
“I would like to emphasize the commitment of the state and my own personal commitment to bringing the persons who may have commissioned and or executed this crime to justice,” Muscat said.
Investigators believed that some of the suspects in custody had helped craft the bomb that killed Galizia, who had also been investigating the links between Maltese politicians and the Panama Papers, cases of government corruption and links drug traffickers had established on the island nation. Malta’s government offered a 1 million euro reward for information relating to the killing.
The crime moved the public both in Malta and abroad, though the journalist’s sons, Matthew, Andrew and Paul, criticised the government. Matthew had called Malta a “Mafia state” in which the government had allowed a culture of impunity to flourish and demanded that Muscat resign.
“He filled his office with crooks, then he filled the police with crooks and imbeciles, then he filled the courts with crooks and incompetents,” he had said.
Matthew told the Guardian that his family were “in the dark” about the arrests and had not been offered any information. The family, he said, received a phone call from a magistrate’s office after the arrests were known but did not have additional details.
The family have alleged that her murder was a “targeted killing”.
