Matthew Caruana Galizia Hits Out At UK For Refusing To Demand Public Inquiry Into His Mother’s Murder
Matthew Caruana Galizia has criticised the United Kingdom’s government for refusing to pressure its Maltese counterpart into opening a public inquiry into whether the assassination of his mother Daphne Caruana Galizia could have been prevented.
“Human rights bodies, like the Council of Europe, and its agencies that focus on money laundering, and the rule of law, are really doing their best,” Caruana Galizia told The Financial Times. “But what is disappointing is the response of individual governments within Europe, especially the UK government. They [the UK] refused to support the call for a public inquiry, even though in the UK public inquiries are set up as a matter of course for things that are much less serious than the murder of a journalist.”
The UK Foreign Office told the Financial Times it had “regularly” raised Caruana Galizia’s case with the Maltese government but it referred to a recent statement made by the UK’s former Europe Minister, who said “the decision to establish a public inquiry is a matter for the Maltese government”.
The Caruana Galzia family’s attempt to pressure the UK, which it said they chose because of its close ties and history with Malta, has been supported by the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders.
In comments to the Financial Times, RSF said it had experienced “significant difficulty” trying to raise case with the British Foreign Office.
My comments in today's @FT. @RSF_en calls again on @foreignoffice to support the call for an independent public inquiry into the assassination of journalist #DaphneCaruanaGalizia – a step @coe has given the Maltese government a 3-month window to implement. https://t.co/OqBrbbB1fP
— Rebecca Vincent (@rebecca_vincent) August 26, 2019
The government has so far resisted calls for a public inquiry into whether Caruana Galizia’s murder could have been prevented, arguing that it could clash with the ongoing criminal investigation into who masterminded her murder.
However, after the Council of Europe gave Malta three months to open a public inquiry, Foreign Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela said that the government will respect its demand.
In a statement to the Financial Times, the Maltese government said: “There is an ongoing engagement with the Council of Europe to ensure that such inquiry does not, in any way, prejudice the current criminal proceedings against three persons accused with the same murder.”
Matthew Caruana Galizia warned there would be no justice for his mother without an independent public inquiry.
“There is a definite lack of political will in Malta to go beyond the low-level organised crime aspects of my mother’s murder,” he said. “The police are seeing this as an opportunity to finally prosecute the low level thugs . . . there is no will to go beyond the people who are criminally culpable for the murder.
“Even if people at the highest level of government in Malta did not directly commission the murder and did not mastermind it, at the very least they expressed a wish for someone to do something to stop my mother, and this wish would have been carried out by their underlings.”
“There is a fear that a strong independent investigation will break the impunity that is protecting those within government who still need to be prosecuted and who still need to be brought to justice.”
READ NEXT: PN Leader Marks Daphne Caruana Galizia’s 55th Birthday With Call For Public Inquiry
