Europol Advised Malta Against A Joint Investigation Team, Police Commissioner Says
Europol has told Malta there is currently no basis for a Joint Investigation Team into transnational crime surrounding the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, police commissioner Angelo Gafa said.
“I communicated this request to Europol in my first few days as police commissioner but at this stage it appears there is no basis for a Joint Investigation Team [JIT],” Gafa told a press conference this morning.
“A JIT requires there to be a common objective by more than one EU member state and Europol’s suggestion is that it doesn’t offer any solution at this stage.”
However, he said the goals of a JIT are essentially already being met by a taskforce which was set up following Caruana Galizia’s assassination in 2017 and which includes Europol, the Malta Security Services, the Maltese police and other entities.
“All entities, including a supranational institution [Europol], are working together towards a common goal, to solve this homicide in full, as well as all the other investigations that emerged from this case.”
Assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia
Gafa added that he was not ruling out the possibility of initiating a JIT in the future, remarking that “circumstances do change”.
Caruana Galizia’s family has requested a JIT, a Europol mechanism to tackle cross-border crime by facilitating the coordination of investigations and prosecutions across several states.
Civil society NGO Repubblika also called for a JIT in the wake of last night’s stabbing of murder middleman Melvin Theuma, casting doubt on the police’s statement that this was an attempted suicide.
“We know this country’s history,” Repubblika said, as it made reference to a number of suspicious deaths that took place in Malta.
“We had Nardu Debono who was killed but the police said he escaped from the Depot; we had Wilfred Cardona who was killed but the police said he had bashed his head on the table because of domestic issues; we had Lino Cauchi who was killed and his family said that he was killed so as not to uncover secrets; and we had the weird death of Ġanni Psaila, which the police insist happened during a robbery.”
“We also had the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.”
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