A man accused of detonating the bomb that killed a Maltese anti-corruption blogger listened to the explosion live on the phone of a spotter nearby, a court has heard.
Police say George Degiorgio triggered the bomb hidden in Daphne Caruana Galizia‘s car on October 16 last year by sending a text message as he sat on a boat in Valletta harbour, around 10 miles from her house.
The powerful explosion killed Galizia, who had implicated government officials and senior politicians in scandal, as she drove near her hometown of Bidnija.
George Digiorgio is accused of triggering the bomb which killed a Maltese anti-corruption blogger (left) and listening as the blast took place. He is accused alongside brother Alfred, who visited the scene of the blast several days before it happened
Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed when her car exploded near her hometown of Bidnija in the north of the tiny island nation of Malta
Mobile phone data also showed that Degiorgio’s brother, Alfred, and another suspect, Vince Muscat, had repeatedly visited Bidnija in the days before the blast, police told a preliminary hearing.
Forensic experts also found Alfred’s DNA on a discarded cigarette at a vantage point overlooking the village.
All three deny the murder, which shocked the European Union and raised questions about the rule of law on Malta, the EU’s smallest member.
Shortly before the blast, George Degiorgio received a call from his brother, said Inspector Keith Arnaud as he laid out evidence for a magistrate who will decide whether to put the three suspects on trial.
Galizia was a well-known blogger who had implicated senior politicians and government officials in corruption scandals
‘The phone call between the two brothers lasted 107 seconds, which was approximately the time it took to drive from the Caruana Galizia family home to the site where the car exploded, just down the hill,’ Arnaud told the court.
Shortly after the deadly blast George Degiorgio sent a text to his partner: ‘Buy me wine, my love’.
Caruana Galizia dedicated much of her time to rooting out allegations of corruption on Malta.
She had never written about the three suspects and her family believes that even if they carried out the attack, they were only acting on someone else’s orders.
‘We believe the murder was a political one,’ Caruana Galizia’s husband, Peter, told a separate Malta court.
That hearing is looking into a request by the family to have Deputy Police Commissioner Silvio Valletta removed from the investigation, since he is married to a government minister.
They argue that he has a conflict of interest because the blogger was a fierce critic of the government.
Valletta has rejected the suggestion and said on Wednesday the case was ‘definitely not over’.
He added: ‘It is the intention of the police to ensure that investigations are brought to their full end.’
Laying out initial evidence against the three, an investigator said the bomb used to kill Caruana Galizia was probably triggered by a call from a boat off Malta.
The Digiorgio brothers are accused alongside a third man, Vince Muscat. Pictured is one of the men arriving in court, though it is not clear which one
Police are currently outlining their case against the three men before a magistrate, who will then decide whether they should face trial
All three men have denied involvement in the killing. They had not been personally targeted by Galizia, though her family say they execution was almost certainly ordered by someone else
One of the chief investigators, Keith Arnaud, described how a team from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, brought in by the Malta government to help solve the crime, had focused on a phone number which received a text message at the time of the explosion in Bidnija.
Police say the number was not attached to a mobile phone but to a circuit board used in remote-control devices. The appliance was switched on at 2 a.m. local time in Bidnija on the day of the explosion and went off the grid at the time of the blast.
Part of the circuit board was later found in the wreckage of the car.
Cell phone data suggested the device was triggered by a call from off the coast. CCTV video showed a boat owned by the Degiorgio brothers putting to sea at around 8 a.m. on the day of the killing.
It was later seen still at sea at 2.50 p.m. and was idling at the time of the explosion before returning to harbour.
Arnaud revealed that police had already been tapping the phone of George Degiorgio at the time of the murder and had heard him asking two separate people to top up the credit of a mobile phone number on the morning of the blast.
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