Murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s son testifies in Yorgen Fenech trial
Matthew Caruana Galizia has testified about the assassination of his mother, a journalist who spent years investigating government corruption in Malta. Businessman Yorgen Fenech is alleged to have ordered the 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. He has pleaded not guilty.
Matthew Caruana Galizia was at home in Malta working at his laptop on the morning of October 16, 2017, when he heard the explosion that killed his mother, investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Testifying today before a jury in the trial of businessman Yorgen Fenech, who is charged with commissioning the murder, her son described the last hours he spent with her — and the investigations she was pursuing when she died.
Fenech has pleaded not guilty to charges of complicity and criminal association in the case, which is unfolding in a courtroom in Malta’s capital, Valletta.
Daphne Caruana Galizia had spent years reporting on government corruption. She was 53 years old when she was killed by a bomb placed under her car seat and detonated remotely by SMS.
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"My mother made me some lunch. She saw I hadn’t eaten anything. She had a phone call and left the house,” Matthew Caruana Galizia testified.
“She came back in. She had forgotten my dad’s chequebook — her account was frozen at the time, and he would sign cheques she could use,” he recalled. “Then she left for the last time."
He was a software programmer at the time, and he went back to his work, with music playing in the background.
"Soon after she left the house, I heard an extremely loud explosion," Matthew Caruana Galizia testified.
He went down the lane towards the main road, walking faster and faster until he was running. He saw a tall column of smoke.
"I looked through the fire and saw a black shadow in the car. I thought, ’That’s my mom.’ I looked around to see if there was something I could use to open the door,” he said. “Then I saw a leg on the ground. I thought: for nothing, it’s over."
A police car arrived, and officers took out a fire extinguisher. He shouted at them to use it. "One of them was crying. He told me it was useless," Matthew Caruana Galizia testified.
Before that day, he told the court, he had been a regular person, going to work, taking holidays, spending time with friends. Everything changed the moment his mother was murdered. From then on, he focused on finding her killers.
"My work became the investigation. It became justice," he said. "I put all of my energy into this. This is not something an ordinary person should do, but we couldn’t just sit back and expect things to happen on their own.”
Much of Matthew Caruana Galizia’s testimony concerned the investigation his mother was working on when she was killed. It involved the Electrogas Project, a multi-million euro Maltese government plan to build a new gas power station. Fenech was a shareholder in a company involved in the project.
Keith Schembri, who was chief of staff for then-prime minister Joseph Muscat, testified last week that Fenech had “said things that led me to believe that he might have been the one who did it,” referring to ordering the assasination.
Fenech has alleged that Schembri ordered the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, as have two of the three convicted hitmen. Schembri is not charged in the murder case and has rejected the allegations.