Civil society group Repubblika has called on the state to grant protection to the members within the Attorney General’s Office and the Police Force who are working on the case involving the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

This, Repubblika said, comes in the wake of “attacks” from history lecturer Simon Mercieca on his blog.

“It is clear that in our country there are those who are annoyed by the courage and commitment of officials who are carrying out their duty to expose the mafia and corrupt clique that has ruined public life in Malta,” Repubblika said in a statement.

Just yesterday, following the first sitting in a bribery case concerning lawyers Gianluca Caruana Curran and Charles Mercieca, Simon Mercieca claimed that Deputy AG Philip Galea Farrugia had created “a state of terror” along his mission to find main suspect Yorgen Fenech guilty at all costs.

He said that Galea Farrugia’s goal in the case was to see both lawyers lose their warrants and effectively leave Fenech without adequate legal representation.

When it came to police, Mercieca questioned why the police were so swift to act in this case – and not in the investigations regarding Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi, and government corruption.

“This is all legal dirt,” he wrote.

In previous articles, he described the bribery case as a “vendetta” against Charles Mercieca that was part of a “strategy of terror”.

Since setting up his blog in October, Mercieca has courted controversy, particularly for pedalling a number of wild conspiracy theories, particularly with regards the case against Yorgen Fenech, who has been charged with the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Mercieca has claimed that Fenech was framed and has been kept in police custody simply to satisfy the Caruana Galizia family and the internal political rivals of former PN leader Adrian Delia.

He recently claimed the late journalist’s son Matthew is partially to blame for his mother’s murder because he had parked her car outside on the night before her murder. Mercieca later took offence after Caruana Galizia mocked him as a “single-celled organism”.

He has had to deny claims that he is being secretly funded by Yorgen Fenech or his mother to spin a narrative in favour of the man charged with conspiring to assassinate Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Mercieca is facing contempt of court proceedings for attacking Galea Farrugia.

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