Daphne Murder Suspect Opens Up: Assassins Stalked Daphne And First Planned To Shoot Her
One of the three men charged with assassinating Daphne Caruana Galizia has confessed to police in detail about how he and his accomplices plotted to murder the Maltese journalist.
Vince Muscat confessed to the police in April 2018 in the hope of getting a pardon and his testimony was passed on to Reuters last year. Reuters held off from publishing the details until now so as not to damage the murder investigation.
Muscat said that he and the other suspects, brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio, were paid €150,000 to kill Caruana Galizia, with €30,000 delivered upfront. They used a bomb purchased from Maltese gangsters and supplied by the Italian mafia.
Muscat said he drove Alfred Degiorgio to several meetings with alleged middleman Melvin Theuma and that while he didn’t hear their discussions, Degiorgio briefed him after each meeting.
Details of the meetings were also relayed by Alfred to his brother George.
Muscat said that, after getting the contract, he and the Degiorgios first planned to shoot her and indeed bought a rifle with telescopic sights from Italy.
They started stalking Caruana Galizia, watching her movements and observing her home. They found out that she often sat by a window while working on her laptop and at one point had placed sandbags on a nearby wall to provide a stable rest for the gun to shoot her through the window.
Muscat said he and the Degiorgios followed Caruana Galizia on a family outing to the Phoenicia Hotel in Valletta and to the airport when she and her husband, Peter, went on a foreign trip.
After stalking her, they decided it would be too difficult to shoot the journalist, returned the rifle to the supplier and were provided with a bomb instead.
The alleged assassins continued monitoring Caruana Galizia’s Bidnija home but were faced with a problem in that the journalist usually parked her car inside the compound.
Indeed, Muscat said they had devised a special leash to control the dog in her yard in case they needed to climb over the wall.
However, on the evening of 15th October 2017, they realised that the car had been parked outside the gate to the compound. Caruana Galizia’s son Matthew confirmed with Reuters that he had parked the car in the road that night, something he did quite often.
A source close to the investigation told Reuters that Muscat alleges Alfred Degiorgio broke into the car by levering open the rear-quarter window passenger side and then placed the bomb under the driver’s seat. Meanwhile, he and George Degiorgio kept watch.
Degiorgio then boarded a yacht and sailed it to the Grand Harbour. Just before 3pm, he was informed that Caruana Galizia had entered her car and he sent a text message to a device inside Daphne’s car which detonated the bomb and killed her.
Reuters also carried a quote from Muscat’s wife Pauline Muscat who decried it as an injustice that Theuma has been given a pardon, but her husband hasn’t.
“It’s a complete injustice that Theuma should give evidence against Vince when Vince was the one that led police to him and helped solve this case. He is the one who should be pardoned, not Melvin,” she said.
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