Muscat fainted while delivering a speech at an event on 14 October 2017 held at Le Meridien hotel to mark the 30th anniversary of a manufacturing company. The incident went by unreported.

Caruana Galizia was murdered by a car bomb two days later.

Yesterday, Melvin Theuma, the middleman in the crime, revealed that Alfred Degiorgio, one of the accused who is suspected of carrying out the hit, had called him at one point to tell him that he and his accomplices had planned to kill Caruana Galizia the night before but had to abort the plan due to an unexpected roadblock.

While Theuma was fuzzy on specific dates, he said this happened the day before he heard about the murder on the news.

It should be made clear that Muscat has not been officially linked to the crime by investigators and he has denied any involvement or knowledge in the crime; even if his former Chief of Staff Keith Schembri is alleged to have passed on confidential information to main murder suspect Yorgen Fenech.

Theuma told the court that he was given a false government job after meeting up with Schembri at Castille a few days after he arranged the murder.

He also revealed that Muscat’s former security guard Kenneth Camilleri had fronted the offer to bail out the three men charged with carrying out the assassination and pay the €3 million required for their release

In the past, other sensational claims of Azzopardi on the case have been rubbished by the government and the Labour Party. However, a year ago he was subject to similar treatment when he claimed that the three men charged with carrying out the assassination knew about their imminent arrest beforehand, which has now been confirmed in court.