“Nothing Could Stop Her. Not Even A Bomb” – Fight To Bring Justice For Daphne Caruana Galizia Continues

Interview by: Katarzyna Mierzejewska

Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed when a bomb was remotely detonated underneath her car in October 2017. This murder plunged Malta into turmoil. Three years on, her family is still searching for answers and continues their quest for justice. CFWIJ Engagement Coordinator Katarzyna Mierzejewska spoke to Daphne’s sister and member of The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, Corinne Vella, about Daphne, the investigation and the growing hostile climate for press freedom.

Katia

The killing by car bomb of Daphne Caruana Galizia is one of the most brutal unsolved crimes against journalists. She was killed in October 2017, yet the impunity continues as no one has been charged. What kind of message does this send?

Corinne

This is a very complex question. As for now, three men have been indicted, accused of being the hitmen in the murder. That means at some point this year, they should go to trial. One man has been accused of organizing conspiracy or being involved in a conspiracy. He is still at the pre-trial stage. He was arrested last year, but he has not come to the stage where he has been indicted. The investigations are still open. There's the murder itself, then there are also the crimes that Daphne exposed.  

She was covering politics and she began to uncover corruption. It was a process of discovering transnational crime, networks of people involved in it, money flows and so on. All of that is in theory under investigation. Of course, as the sister of a victim, I feel frustrated by how long everything takes. It took more than a year to indict those three men who are accused of being the hitmen and they still have not been brought to trial. For us, as a family, everything feels slow. However, NGOs working on cases like Daphne's have reassured us that a lot of progress has been made. There are cases of other journalists killed where we see that nobody has come this far in such a period of time. So, in fact, a lot has been achieved so far and it's achieved in very difficult circumstances. When journalists are killed because they have been uncovering corruption, we counter the very high rate of impunity. The reason for this is that the institutions which could and should have protected them are rather weak.

I would like to see justice for Daphne, for her murder and her stories, but I know we're in for the long haul. I know that this is going to take a very long time and nothing is going to go smoothly. There are going to be many obstacles, that has been our experience so far. We realistically have to expect that to continue because criminals don't go quietly and unlike people who are on the right side of the law, they have no boundaries.

How do you evaluate the work of the police, legal system and the authorities in this case? Are they dedicated to thoroughly investigating and analyzing circumstances surrounding Daphne’s murder and the stories she covered? Or could they do more?

There's always the possibility of doing more. We know from testimony in the public inquiry into the circumstances of Daphne’s death, from testimony given by the police themselves, that indeed resources have increased, but resources are never enough. Some movements are in the right direction, but there is always the possibility to do more. Yet, I need to stress that things have improved in the last few months with the appointment of the new head of the economic crime department.

In relation to stories that Daphne covered, absolutely nothing was done during the time when the previous head of economic crimes was in the office. We know that because he testified in open court to that effect. Daphne had a lot of stories about two people in power named in the Panama Papers, and although an investigation was officially opened. there's been no progress. These two men are still free. There have been no prosecutions. Some things improved, but as you see we need to go further.

Daphne’s sons Matthew, Andrew and Paul, were awarded the Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award for their outstanding justice campaign. This is another example of how without the dedication of your whole family and The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation you launched, some of this progress would not be possible. Your stamina and determination make a big impact.

Thank you. Boys really deserved this recognition. But I need to point out that what has really sustained us and actually helps keep the pressure are civil society groups who themselves have become a target. They had the option of not doing anything. Instead, they chose to take on its course and they have helped keep the story alive; they have helped put pressure on authorities. Last year we saw huge protests in the streets initiated by the people who have been showing their support from the beginning. They are not discouraged by the restrictions regarding public gatherings imposed due to the pandemic. They just reshaped their strategy, went online, remain active and they commemorate Daphne every month. This is very important as a family, but also for the process of justice because it keeps reminding people out there that this has not gone away. The crime has not been solved.

Absolutely. Wide media coverage helps to keep the story on the radar and prevents it from becoming forgotten, which would probably be in the interest of many powerful people who were exposed by Daphne.

Yes. Ideally, everybody is equal before the law but we all know, the higher the profile a case has, the more likely something will move in the right direction to an investigation. The less attention it gets in the public domain, the easier is to bury it. It's unfair but that's how it is. That is why we keep reminding in the public sphere about every unsolved murder. It's not just about justice for a specific case, it's about establishing a principle that there is no room for impunity. People implicated in those crimes don’t ignore public attention. They know that big social awareness can pose a threat.

I wanted to ask you about the foundation itself. As we speak about the wide coverage, the foundation also aims to generate greater public awareness in terms of violations of press freedom and crimes committed against journalists.

The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation was set up by Daphne’s husband and sons. Principally, it was created to ensure that justice is served for her murder and her stories. The wider aim is to advocate for better protection of journalists, defending rule of law, defending human rights and aiming to end impunity for the murder of journalists. We are also working on projects to support independent media and through which we can acquire grant money to support such outlets and individuals. We will be seeing some results over the coming months.

Another thing is the protection of Daphne’s work. It was being destroyed in a sense that there were attempts to undermine her credibility, claims that she was not a journalist, that she made everything up and her stories have no validity, should be ignored and buried with her.

I would like to speak a bit about Daphne herself. What was journalism to her?

It was her life really, I heard her saying that. With such an approach, you can’t just switch off your mind; you keep analyzing, digging, reading, staying curious and then eventually you want to write. If you are a pianist, you need to compose music, if you are a journalist, you need to write, and that is what she did. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t do anything else, which some people always tried to imply. Nothing could be further from the truth. She just managed to accomplish all of that raising a family, keeping a house and running her own magazine. When it got to the stage where people told her: why don't you just give it up and concentrate on the things that matter. She always said: This is what matters. We need to document everything that is happening, even if there is a little chance that my reporting will change anything we still need to try.

Daphne repeatedly received threats. How did that affect her? Did she ever get scared?

I imagine that it was hard and scary but she was reluctant to speak openly about such feelings like fear. However, we have to understand the context, in her situation anybody would feel high pressure. But it didn't stop her. Some say she was fearless, I would say it was more a case of being courageous in the face of fear. There are dangerous people out there and that you are reporting about them and know that something could happen but it was never going to stop her. Nothing stopped her, let's put it this way, not even a bomb. People are still talking about her and her work. So really nothing could have stopped her. They made a big terrible mistake. She and her coverage will live with us and I hope it will set a great example for other generations for not only journalists in Malta but in Europe in general when we were facing so many violations right now, especially now.

Did she ever want to quit? I feel that was never an option.

My nephew made a remark about this recently. There were only two things that stopped her from writing temporarily. One when my nephew was working in diplomatic service and he was recalled from his posting at short notice, with no explanation and my sister realized that this was some sort of way of putting pressure on her. It affected her and she didn’t write for about a month. The other one was a bomb, but she never stopped writing.

Did she ever receive some assistance or security when she was receiving threats?

It's a tricky question because the thing is that threats don’t work like in movies: you pick up a phone and the menacing voice tells you to stop working on something or there will be consequences. It doesn't quite work like that. The threat sort of hangs in the air. You feel if you're reporting on crime and nothing is happening then obviously those people you're reporting on have some sort of influence or have friends who are trying to protect them. There's the feeling of hostility that you can't go out and feel at ease because people are looking to take pictures. People tried to cripple her financially and drain her emotionally. The pressure was especially piling in the last year of her life. There was a case of a minister, Chris Cardona, who had her bank accounts frozen because she reported that he was in a brothel when he was supposed to be on official business in Germany. The fact that he felt he could do that with impunity already tells you just how dangerous the situation is. A sitting minister can go to court to take a false oath to have a journalist's bank accounts frozen and talk about it.

When you report on high-level crime involving people in power and building your transnational money flows and nothing happens to the people you mentioned, you know you are the last person standing between the rule of law and its collapse. That was a very dangerous place. Nobody needs to actually make a call and threaten you, you know it's dangerous.

Absolutely. Wide media coverage helps to keep the story on the radar and prevents it from becoming forgotten, which would probably be in the interest of many powerful people who were exposed by Daphne.

Yes. Ideally, everybody is equal before the law but we all know, the higher the profile a case has, the more likely something will move in the right direction to an investigation. The less attention it gets in the public domain, the easier is to bury it. It's unfair but that's how it is. That is why we keep reminding in the public sphere about every unsolved murder. It's not just about justice for a specific case, it's about establishing a principle that there is no room for impunity. People implicated in those crimes don’t ignore public attention. They know that big social awareness can pose a threat.

I wanted to ask you about the foundation itself. As we speak about the wide coverage, the foundation also aims to generate greater public awareness in terms of violations of press freedom and crimes committed against journalists.

The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation was set up by Daphne’s husband and sons. Principally, it was created to ensure that justice is served for her murder and her stories. The wider aim is to advocate for better protection of journalists, defending rule of law, defending human rights and aiming to end impunity for the murder of journalists. We are also working on projects to support independent media and through which we can acquire grant money to support such outlets and individuals. We will be seeing some results over the coming months.

Another thing is the protection of Daphne’s work. It was being destroyed in a sense that there were attempts to undermine her credibility, claims that she was not a journalist, that she made everything up and her stories have no validity, should be ignored and buried with her.

I would like to speak a bit about Daphne herself. What was journalism to her?

It was her life really, I heard her saying that. With such an approach, you can’t just switch off your mind; you keep analyzing, digging, reading, staying curious and then eventually you want to write. If you are a pianist, you need to compose music, if you are a journalist, you need to write, and that is what she did. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t do anything else, which some people always tried to imply. Nothing could be further from the truth. She just managed to accomplish all of that raising a family, keeping a house and running her own magazine. When it got to the stage where people told her: why don't you just give it up and concentrate on the things that matter. She always said: This is what matters. We need to document everything that is happening, even if there is a little chance that my reporting will change anything we still need to try.

Daphne repeatedly received threats. How did that affect her? Did she ever get scared?

I imagine that it was hard and scary but she was reluctant to speak openly about such feelings like fear. However, we have to understand the context, in her situation anybody would feel high pressure. But it didn't stop her. Some say she was fearless, I would say it was more a case of being courageous in the face of fear. There are dangerous people out there and that you are reporting about them and know that something could happen but it was never going to stop her. Nothing stopped her, let's put it this way, not even a bomb. People are still talking about her and her work. So really nothing could have stopped her. They made a big terrible mistake. She and her coverage will live with us and I hope it will set a great example for other generations for not only journalists in Malta but in Europe in general when we were facing so many violations right now, especially now.

Did she ever want to quit? I feel that was never an option.

My nephew made a remark about this recently. There were only two things that stopped her from writing temporarily. One when my nephew was working in diplomatic service and he was recalled from his posting at short notice, with no explanation and my sister realized that this was some sort of way of putting pressure on her. It affected her and she didn’t write for about a month. The other one was a bomb, but she never stopped writing.

Did she ever receive some assistance or security when she was receiving threats?

It's a tricky question because the thing is that threats don’t work like in movies: you pick up a phone and the menacing voice tells you to stop working on something or there will be consequences. It doesn't quite work like that. The threat sort of hangs in the air. You feel if you're reporting on crime and nothing is happening then obviously those people you're reporting on have some sort of influence or have friends who are trying to protect them. There's the feeling of hostility that you can't go out and feel at ease because people are looking to take pictures. People tried to cripple her financially and drain her emotionally. The pressure was especially piling in the last year of her life. There was a case of a minister, Chris Cardona, who had her bank accounts frozen because she reported that he was in a brothel when he was supposed to be on official business in Germany. The fact that he felt he could do that with impunity already tells you just how dangerous the situation is. A sitting minister can go to court to take a false oath to have a journalist's bank accounts frozen and talk about it.

When you report on high-level crime involving people in power and building your transnational money flows and nothing happens to the people you mentioned, you know you are the last person standing between the rule of law and its collapse. That was a very dangerous place. Nobody needs to actually make a call and threaten you, you know it's dangerous.

Absolutely. If there are no consequences and certain people remain safe in their high-ranking professional positions, you know they are strong enough to make a story go away and impede you at work. There is also a matter of a backlash on Daphne, as not everybody liked the way she expressed her opinions.

Even today, people would say: I don't agree with what she has to say, but she doesn't deserve to be killed. There's no but, she shouldn't have been killed, end of story. People should be free to say what they want of course bearing in mind some limits on free expression. For every single thing she may have said she got thousands more hateful comments, but she didn't make a fuss about it. She's been dead for 3 years and some people are still suing here, explaining that they need to fight for their reputation.

Really?

Indeed. Overall, there were 47 libel cases against Daphne, many of them are still active. There are 19 cases initiated by one person alone as he feels his reputation was harmed. Those cases have been condemned widely by international organizations. That was an editorial only this week signed by 99 organizations condemning it.

How do you remember the time when she was working on Panama Papers and used this leak to investigate government officials?

It was the time when the situation became particularly dangerous. A turning point, the stakes were high. She was reporting on the fact that a minister in the prime minister’s office and the prime minister's Chief of Staff were setting up companies in Panama structured to secrecy. They were doing something which they wanted to keep hidden and she exposed it. The Prime Minister didn't ask for those men's resignations, he defended them publicly and remained defending them until they eventually resigned recently. They are still out of jail, they haven't been prosecuted. People in Malta are very angry about it. They don’t have to be directly implicated in Daphne’s murder itself but this culture of impunity enabled her murder.

How would you describe the reality for press freedom and independent media in Malta?

I have an outside point of view because I'm not a journalist myself but I can't help thinking that if it was dangerous for Daphne it is even more dangerous now because of the possibility of being killed. Now we know for sure, journalists can be killed in Malta as a result of pursuing their coverage. Although people have been arrested and are facing criminal proceedings, we don't know who else is out there with the potential to do this and if you get too close, something could happen to you. It's very difficult to be a journalist today and it shouldn't be that way because journalism is so important now, maybe more than ever.

The more we observe a pattern of impunity and the crimes against journalists remain unresolved, the less likely reporters will be to pick up a controversial, important topic for being anxious about potential consequences and their lack of protection.

The great idea for now is to join forces. It is important to send a message: you might kill a journalist but you will not kill a story and you will not get away with your crimes because other people are watching you. That’s why The Daphne Project, launched by Forbidden Stories, is so important. They coordinated work of numerous organizations to keep her stories and stories about her assassination alive, safely stored in one place.

This is surely a very effective way to make sure that Daphne’s lifework will not be forgotten. What are the other ways to keep her legacy alive?

Her work needs to remain available to the public. Her blog is still there, her stories are still published and they were not taken down, even though there were many attempts to do so. All of the material that Daphne collected is not going anywhere. Her stories endured her and survived all of the campaigns to discredit her as a journalist and her sources. She always said that the truth must be in the forefront and we want to make sure it happens. There are students coming to me and saying they do a project on Daphne, people remember her, get inspired by her determination and work ethic. This is the best way to keep her legacy alive, to be a source of inspiration for future generations.