The acquittal of businessman Yorgen Fenech has reopened a wound that has never healed in Malta. Five people have been convicted for their role in the journalist’s murder, but the fundamental question remains unanswered: who ordered the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia?
On October 16, 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia left her home in Bidnija, in northern Malta, got into her Peugeot 108 and drove away.
A short time later, a bomb planted beneath the driver’s seat exploded. The device had been remotely detonated.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was 53 years old.
She was one of Malta’s best-known investigative journalists and, for more than thirty years, had investigated the connections between politics, business, corruption, money laundering and organized crime. Her blog, Running Commentary, had become one of the country’s most widely read websites and an independent platform through which she published information and investigations that often challenged some of the most powerful people on the island.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Caruana Galizia had also extensively investigated the Maltese connections revealed by the Panama Papers and allegations of corruption involving members of the country’s political and economic elite.
Her journalism came at an increasingly high price.
Daphne had been threatened, insulted and subjected to years of intimidation. The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation recalls that her home was set on fire twice, three of the family’s dogs were killed, and numerous defamation lawsuits were filed against her, often by politicians from both the government and the opposition.
Two weeks before her murder, she had reported death threats to the police.
But she continued to write.
Just minutes before she was killed, she published her final post.
Her death immediately transformed the Maltese case into a European issue. It was not simply the murder of an individual: a journalist who had spent years investigating the relationship between political and economic power in a European Union member state had been eliminated.
The investigation initially led to the men accused of physically organizing and carrying out the attack.
In 2021, Vincent Muscat pleaded guilty to his involvement in the murder and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In 2022, brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio admitted their involvement and were sentenced to 40 years each.
In 2025, Robert Agius and Jamie Vella were also found guilty of supplying the bomb used to murder the journalist and were sentenced to life imprisonment. Their convictions were upheld on appeal in January 2026.
Five people have therefore been convicted for participating, at different levels, in the preparation and execution of the murder.
But for almost nine years, the most important question has remained unanswered: who ordered the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia?
In November 2019, Maltese authorities arrested businessman Yorgen Fenech as he attempted to leave Malta aboard a yacht. Fenech, a highly influential figure in the Maltese business world with connections to senior political figures, was subsequently charged with complicity in the murder, criminal association and conspiracy.
An intermediary, Melvin Theuma, had received a presidential pardon in exchange for cooperating with investigators and identified Fenech as the man who had allegedly financed the assassination.
The case had enormous political consequences. The investigation revealed links between Fenech and Keith Schembri, then chief of staff to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. Amid widespread protests across Malta, Muscat announced his resignation in 2019.
Fenech’s trial finally began on July 1, 2026.
It lasted 55 days.
On September 2, a nine-member jury acquitted him, by eight votes to one, of charges of complicity in the murder and criminal association.
Fenech, who has always maintained his innocence, left the courthouse after the verdict was read.
The decision sparked protests in Malta and a strong reaction from international press freedom organizations.
The following day, the Committee to Protect Journalists declared that the fight for justice for Daphne must continue.
Almost nine years after the explosion in Bidnija, Malta has convicted people who built the bomb, organized the attack and participated in the murder. But it has still not convicted anyone for ordering the killing.
Prosecutors are expected to appeal Fenech’s acquittal. In addition, following the trial, the court ordered that certain testimony be forwarded to two ongoing magisterial inquiries and to the police so that the potential criminal responsibility of other individuals can be examined.
The case, therefore, is not over.
But the issue goes far beyond the trial of a single defendant.
In 2019, following a long campaign by the Caruana Galizia family and pressure from international institutions, Malta established an independent public inquiry to determine whether the state bore responsibility for the circumstances that had made the assassination possible.
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The inquiry found that the Maltese state had contributed to creating a climate of impunity, had failed to adequately recognize the risks Daphne faced and had not taken sufficient measures to protect her.
In other words, her murder had been foreseeable and could have been prevented.
Yet according to the CPJ, many of the recommendations made by the public inquiry have still not been implemented, and Malta has failed to carry out sufficiently far-reaching reforms to guarantee media freedom and the safety of journalists.
This is what makes the Caruana Galizia case more than the judicial story of a murder.
Daphne investigated power. Power responded with lawsuits, smear campaigns, intimidation and pressure. When the threats against her became increasingly serious, the institutions failed to protect her.
Then someone placed a bomb beneath the seat of her car.
And almost nine years later, from a judicial standpoint, we still do not know who ordered it.
The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, established to continue the fight for justice, press freedom and democracy, argues that the authorities’ failure to fully address the corruption and abuses of power Daphne was investigating continues to create insecurity for Maltese journalists.
The problem of impunity does not concern Malta alone.
When the murder of a journalist does not lead to the identification and conviction of those who ordered the killing, the message sent to other journalists is devastating: investigating the most powerful people can have extreme consequences, while those at the top of the chain of responsibility may remain beyond reach.
This is also why, through ChannelDraw, I continue to document the stories of journalists who are threatened, imprisoned and killed.
In the project Portraits of Journalists in the Israel-Gaza Conflict, created using data from the CPJ, the faces of journalists who have been killed become a visual archive against their transformation into mere numbers.
The same principle lies behind the exhibition The Murdered Truth: remembering those who were killed while trying to document what was happening also means defending everyone’s right to know the truth.
And it continues in the work created with the CPJ, Faces of Journalism Under Detention, dedicated to journalists imprisoned around the world because of their work.
The situations are profoundly different, but the question running through them is the same: what happens to a society when those who investigate power are intimidated, imprisoned or eliminated?
Daphne Caruana Galizia has become one of Europe’s most important symbols of that question.
Her murder has led to protests, international investigations, convictions, political resignations, new journalistic collaborations and a long struggle by her family. It also helped bring greater European attention to the problem of SLAPPs — strategic lawsuits used to intimidate journalists and other critical voices.
But none of these outcomes can replace justice.
Following the September 2 verdict, Daphne’s family recalled that during the long trial they had been able to listen to many people speak about the murder, but they would never again be able to hear Daphne’s voice.
Perhaps this is the essential point.
Behind a case that has become an international symbol of press freedom was a woman who, for thirty years, had simply been doing her job: searching for documents, following the money, verifying connections, publishing information and asking powerful people questions.
Someone decided she had to stop.
On October 16, 2017, a bomb succeeded in stopping her.
Almost nine years later, it remains to be definitively established who decided that bomb should explode.
As long as that question remains unanswered, the story of the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia is not over.
Sources
- Committee to Protect Journalists — Malta: The fight for justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia must continue, September 3, 2026
- Committee to Protect Journalists — Daphne Caruana Galizia
- Committee to Protect Journalists — Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder: Landmark trial puts Malta’s press freedom back in spotlight
- Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation — Who was Daphne Caruana Galizia?
- Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation — Justice, journalism and memory
- Reuters — The killing of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and its aftermath, September 2, 2026
- Reuters — Acquittal in journalist murder trial stirs tensions in Malta, September 3, 2026
- Government of Malta — Statement following the verdict, September 3, 2026
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