WATCH: The Mother, The Wife And The Journalist: Daphne Caruana Galizia’s Family Interviewed For The First Time
The husband and three sons of late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia have spoken on camera to The Guardian, in what was their first interview since their mother’s assassination last October.
In the emotional interview, Peter Caruana Galizia describes how he had first met Daphne in the summer of 1983 and how the two of them used to go swimming together.
“She started writing in 1988 after Paul was born,” Peter said. “If she got a story she’d go for it with no holds barred. She always used to say that she took no prisoners but shot to kill. She had ironically predicted that the last option for the people she wrote about was for them to hire someone to kill her so subconsciously she knew.”
Peter Caruana Galizia
Her eldest son Matthew described the moment he heard an explosion on 16th October and ran outside to find a ball of fire and his mother’s body parts strewn over the ground.
“The feeling of frustration at not being able to do anything was so overwhelming,” he said.
Matthew described his mother as an extremely intelligence woman and as a “force of nature who had the personality of a hundred people packed into one”.
“She lived and breathed journalism, it was an extension of her personality,” Matthew said. “What changed over the years was the scale of corruption in Malta and her reporting changed with it. Everyone in power was compromised beyond belief. I remember waking up every morning with a feeling of absolute dread, wondering what on earth was going to happen next. They tried arresting her, framing her and suing her but they couldn’t stop her so they just killed her. If all the people my mother had reported on had faced justice then this wouldn’t have happened.”
Matthew Caruana Galizia
Andrew and Paul Caruana Galizia
Daphne’s middle son Andrew described his mother as a very principled person who didn’t fit into the loud and obnoxious Maltese stereotype and who almost observed Maltese society as an outsider.
“Apart from my mother being taken away, I feel my country was taken away,” Andrew said. “I felt that the world had collapsed, that no one was safe anymore. We had no time to grieve or to think about our mother, we were instantly flooded with requests for evidence and asked if we would endorse a reward.
“None of us got any satisfaction when the three men were arrested because they didn’t mean anything to us. It was almost like the bomb had been arrested; they were just a tool used by the person with the real motive to kill my murder. There is also a formal problem, in that the Prime Minister constantly says ‘we are investigating and we will find the mastermind’. What if the mastermind is someone linked to him though? There are no independent institutions in between citizens and government in Malta and her assassination became possible for that reason.
READ NEXT: Daphne Caruana Galizia’s Family Refused To Hand Over Laptop Due To Mistrust Of Police
