Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination by car-bomb was not the first murder or attempted murder in this style in the years leading up to her killing. However, in all the years and after the several car bombings4 that occurred before October 2017, we are not aware of a single arrest by the police in connection with the bombings.
The arrests that occurred in the aftermath of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia followed forensic investigations that connected the bombing to the alleged perpetrators. The evidence suggests that the modus operandi in the case of Daphne’s killing had been used in prior bombings.
It is, therefore, reasonable to suggest that if the same forensic methodology had been applied to the investigation of earlier cases, the method used to kill Daphne Caruana Galizia might have been prevented by earlier police action.
This is not to say that those who wanted Daphne Caruana Galizia dead may not have found other ways of achieving their aim.
It is axiomatic that one way of protecting potential victims of crime is by finding and punishing perpetrators of crime. Until authorities perceived public and international pressure to show they were investigating a murder because of the high-profile nature of the victim in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s case, car bombs were allowed to happen without consequence.
The people who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia using a car bomb had every reason to believe no one would identify them as no one was identified in connection with all the other prior car bombings. That is a consequence of the failure of the State to enforce the law in prior cases that used the same method or modus operandi.