Judge rejects George Degiorgio’s “editing” allegation

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In its constitutional jurisdiction, the First Chamber of the Civil Court ruled that George Degiorgio, one of those accused of committing the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, had not been trapped, as he alleged.

Caruana Galizia was killed in a car bomb as she left her home in Bidnija on October 16, 2017.

George Degiorgio is indicted, along with his brother Alfred, for the murder.

Degiorgio, said iċ-Ċiniż, was identified by police as the person who remotely detonated the bomb that killed the journalist.

Police evidence presented in court placed Degiorgio on his boat, the Maya, under the large siege bell in Grand Harbor, when the text message triggering the bomb was sent.

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The courts heard how Degiorgio allegedly received the signal from his brother Alfred Degiorgio, known as il-Fulu, who acted as an observer in Bidnija with Vincent Muscat, known as il-Koħħu. Muscat then admitted his guilt as part of a plea deal and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The three men were arrested in December 2017 and charged by the court with the murder of the journalist. All three are known criminals with a series of high-profile crimes under their belt.

However, in a constitutional petition filed in September 2018, George Degiorgio’s attorney, William Cuschieri, asked the court to declare that his client’s right to a fair trial had been violated, alleging that the police had sought evidence for justify his arrest.

In the constitutional case, Degiorgio had insisted that he was charged with the murder “under the pretext or assuming that he was on a particular boat” when the murder took place. He described the prosecution’s request to appoint an expert to identify the boat he was on when the murder took place as an attempted plot.

The defendants in the constitutional case, the attorney general and the police commissioner insisted that the evidence involving the boat was only part of a much larger body of evidence on which Degiorgio had been translated into justice.

In a judgment delivered earlier today, Judge Grazio Mercieca ruled that a violation of the constitutional right to a fair trial can only be declared if criteria clearly established by law are present.

“It is clear that the complainant’s complaints do not appear in any of these [criteria]. What the applicant is really asking is that this Court decide the questions relating to the regulation and the assessment of the evidence, which fall within the purview of the courts of criminal justice.

“But this Court does not have the jurisdiction to get involved in criminal proceedings in this manner. Therefore, he is not even going to rule on whether the applicant’s allegations are factual or not, because if he does, there is a risk of harming the criminal proceedings. This could be prejudicial to both the prosecution and the defense.

The law dictates that these types of proceedings are only used in exceptional cases, when they are really necessary due to the lack of adequate ordinary remedies, and that they are not filed haphazardly in a monopolistic manner. the precious time of these courts, the time of which could have been used to hear other cases. Otherwise, there would be the trivialization of the special procedure used when a violation of fundamental human rights is alleged.

Further, it is clear from the testimony of Superintendent Keith Arnaud, who is pursuing the case, that the boat-related evidence was not the only, nor the conclusive evidence that led to the arrest and charge of the accused in connection with this murder. said the judge. “On the contrary, it was just one of many.”

The case was dismissed with costs to be borne by the plaintiff.

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