TMIS Editorial: The verdict is not the end of the story

Yorgen Fenech has been acquitted. That verdict must be respected.

Nine jurors heard two months of evidence and, having considered what was placed before them, concluded that the prosecution did not prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt. That is how a criminal justice system works.

But respecting the verdict does not mean pretending that everything that emerged during this trial can now be put away in a drawer.

It cannot.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated. A car bomb did not assemble itself, and someone, somewhere, commissioned her murder. Almost nine years later, the person or people who ordered that assassination remain free. That is the central fact that Malta must confront.

The jury has answered the question it was asked: whether Yorgen Fenech was guilty of the charges brought against him. It has not answered the much larger questions surrounding Daphne’s murder.

Those questions remain.

The police, on the instruction of Judge Edwina Grima, must now go back over the evidence heard during this trial, carefully, and without fear or favour. Every lead must be followed. Every allegation or indication of wrongdoing must be assessed. Evidence that was not properly pursued, evidence that may have been overlooked, and evidence that emerged during the proceedings must be examined afresh.

The trial brought an enormous amount of evidence before the jury and an extraordinary number of witnesses. There is a legitimate question as to whether the prosecution’s strategy ultimately strengthened its case or made it more difficult for jurors to establish a clear and coherent chain of evidence.

More is not necessarily better.

When a case is subject to the exceptionally high threshold of proof beyond reasonable doubt, an accumulation of evidence that is complicated, contradictory, or difficult to connect can have the opposite effect to that intended. Instead of eliminating doubt, it can create it.

That is not a criticism of the jurors. It is a reminder of the standard that prosecutors must meet.

The prosecution had one job: to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. The fact that it failed to do so should prompt an honest examination of the case that was presented, how it was assembled, and whether the investigative foundations beneath it were strong enough.

And there are other questions that cannot be ignored.

The trial brought to the surface concerns about conflicts of interest, missing or unseized electronic evidence, suspected leaks, and the extraordinary proximity between political power, business interests, the police, and people connected to the investigation. These are not trivial matters. The Nationalist Party and civil society organisations have both pointed to them in their reactions to the verdict.

They deserve answers.

There is also an unavoidable political dimension.

Whatever the Labour Party may say, and whatever efforts are made to draw a line under the events of those years, what happened in Castille before and after Daphne’s murder while Joseph Muscat was prime minister will remain intrinsically linked to this story.

Malta cannot rewrite its recent history. Muscat cannot expect us to forget.

The public inquiry into Daphne’s assassination reached a devastating conclusion in 2021: the State had created an atmosphere of impunity in which the assassination became possible. It identified institutional failures, political interference, and the protection of people close to power. The fact that Yorgen Fenech has now been acquitted does not erase those findings.

Nor does it erase the political responsibility arising from them.

The jury and the court have done their duty.

We cannot say the same for the State.

The government’s response that institutions have been given the necessary resources and that several people have already been convicted does not provide the complete answer. Several people being punished for participating in the murder is not the same thing as establishing who commissioned it, why Daphne was targeted, and whether anyone with political or institutional influence helped create the conditions in which the assassination could happen.

Daphne’s murder was not simply another criminal case. It became a defining moment in Malta’s modern history because it exposed the relationship between corruption, political power, business interests, and institutional weakness.

The murder itself cannot be separated from that wider context.

The acquittal therefore presents Malta with a choice.

It can declare that justice has run its course, point to the jury verdict, and move on.

Or it can recognise that the trial has left many unanswered questions.

The second course is the only acceptable one.

The police must investigate what emerged during the trial. The authorities must examine whether investigative failures occurred and why. The public inquiry’s recommendations, which have been sitting on a shelf for five years, must be fully implemented.

Political responsibility must not be confused with criminal liability, but neither should political responsibility be allowed to disappear simply because a criminal prosecution has ended in an acquittal.

Yorgen Fenech has been cleared of the charges brought against him. That is the outcome of the trial.

But Daphne’s murder remains unresolved in its fullest sense.

The story does not end here.

 

RSS Feed Source: Independent Malta TMIS Editorial: The verdict is not the end of the story