Thousands march in Malta over journalist killed in car bomb

Police removed a banner describing Malta as a ‘Mafia state’

(AP)

Thousands of Maltese citizens joined a rally to honour an investigative journalist killed by a car bomb.

But the prime minister and opposition leader who were chief targets of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s reporting stayed away from the gathering on Sunday.

Participants at the rally in Malta’s capital, Valletta, placed flowers at the foot of a memorial to the 53-year-old reporter that sprang up opposite the law court building after her killing on Monday.

Some wore T-shirts or carried placards emblazoned with words from Ms Caruana Galizia’s final blog post: “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.”

Police removed a banner describing Malta as a “Mafia state”.

Hundreds of participants later held a sit-in outside police headquarters, demanding the resignation of Malta’s police commissioner.

Some hurled tomatoes, cakes and coins against an enlarged photograph of the commissioner spread out on the street.

The murder of a journalist who devoted her career to exposing wrongdoing in Malta and raised her three sons there united many of the nation’s fractious politicians, at least for a day.

Ms Caruana Galizia had repeatedly criticised police and judicial officials.

Malta’s two dominant political forces, the ruling Labor and opposition Nationalist parties, participated in the rally which was organised to press demands for justice in her killing.

But Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told his Labor party’s radio station a few hours before the event’s start time that he would not attend because he knew the anti-corruption reporter’s family did not want him to be there.

“I know where I should be and where I should not be. I am not a hypocrite and I recognise the signs,” he said, adding that he supported the rally’s call for justice and national unity.

Nationalist leader Adrian Delia also skipped the rally, saying he did not want to “stir controversy”.

“Today is not about me, but about the rule of law and democracy,” he told reporters.

Mr Muscat and Mr Delia, while fierce political rivals, have another thing in common, as both brought libel lawsuits against Ms Caruana Galizia.

Mr Delia withdrew his pending libel cases last week after her killing.

Ms Caruana Galizia’s family has refused to endorse the government’s offer of a €1 million (£890,000) reward and full protection to anyone with information that leads to the arrest and prosecution of her killer or killers.

Instead, the family, which includes a son who is an investigative journalist himself, has demanded that Mr Muscat resign.

In their quest for a serious and efficient investigation, Ms Caruana Galizia’s husband and children also want Malta’s top police office and attorney general replaced.

“The killers decided to silence her, but they won’t silence her spirit, they won’t silence us,” Christophe Deloire, a French journalist from the journalism advocacy organisation Reporters Without Borders, said.

“From us they will not have more than one minute of silence.”

On Sunday morning, all seven national newspapers printed black front pages in Ms Caruana Galizia’s memory. Printed in bold letters against the black backgrounds were the words: “The pen conquers fear.”

Just before her death, Ms Caruana Galizia had posted on her closely followed blog, Running Commentary, that there were “crooks everywhere” in Malta.

The island nation has a reputation as a tax haven in the EU and has attracted companies and money from outside Europe.

The journalist focused her reporting for years on investigating political corruption and scandals, and writing about Maltese mobsters and the island’s drug trafficking.

She also wrote about Maltese links to the so-called Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.

After the rally ended, several hundred participants walked to police headquarters and sat in the street outside shouting “Shame on you!” and “Resign!”

Malta President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca received a delegation from the Civil Society Network, a non-partisan organisation of university professors, businessmen, opinion writers and authors in Malta.

The car bombing was “an attack on all of us, every single one of us,” she told them.

“We need to see how we are going to work together. We need to unite to have the reform that is needed.”

AP