Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said soon after the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia that “the country deserves justice”.29 The comment was in the same vein of remarks he made elsewhere that this had been an outrage to Maltese democracy and free expression.
These words framed the importance of this crime in the correct context. No doubt as with any other crime, the victim and her mourning relatives deserve swift and firm justice. Those accused of perpetrating the crime are entitled to timely and fair justice.
But this is not “any other crime”. This was an attack on the fabric of society and words alone do not cut it.
Malta’s democracy and free expression continue to be exposed to this outrage for as long as the country does not get the justice it deserves. We have here more than a murder, although it is that too, and we do not propose for a moment to diminish the right Daphne’s family have for justice after their loss and the unjustifiably prolonged suffering they continue to be subjected to. But we also have an existential challenge to our democracy to address. Democracy is meaningless if it is unable to protect free expression and to serve justice on those who would suppress it.
And yet, in spite of the extraordinary nature of the crime, the State has dealt with this case in the most ordinary manner. The inquiring magistrate worked on this case on a part-time basis as though it were like any other. Upon the Executive’s intervention, the inquiring magistrate was changed mid-stream. The compilation of evidence against the accused is tortuously prolonged and presiding magistrates carry the duty along with all their remaining ordinary activities and heavy caseloads. Proceedings are heard at the ordinary pace of ordinary cases, without regard to the scale and consequence of the case, which is anything but ordinary.
The State, in fact, continues to act as if it is not indeed fighting an existential challenge from a mafia-state within it.
To defeat the mafia and to frustrate its activities – whether violent, such as the murder of a journalist that exposes it, or not, such as the corruption, the manipulation of public procurement and the infiltration in public institutions to name a few examples that are directly relevant to this case – we feel there is a very strong case for dedicated magistrates, equipped with investigative and prosecutorial resources, able to work on their own initiative, without external dependencies, and focused exclusively to bring prosecutions to dedicated anti-mafia courts.
We also underline the importance of victim restitution. Organised crime saps the resources of the community by exploiting and over-exploiting land, the landscape, air and the economic resources that should support and enhance the wellbeing of the community instead of lining the pockets of the greedy. Proceeds from crime should be confiscated and redistributed within the communities from which the mafia had taken them away, by using those funds to fund initiatives by local government, churches and NGOs working to mitigate the environmental, social and economic hardship suffered by the community at the hands of organised crime.
We acknowledge that the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia is in many respects unprecedented. That said, the country is not altogether unfamiliar with at least the attempted assassination of an individual which the perpetrators hoped would eliminate obstacles to their pursuit of illicit gains. And the country could have perhaps learnt more lessons from past failures to bring to justice perpetrators of violent, politically-motivated crimes.
But even if we were to allow for the fact that the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia presented the State with a challenge for which its institutions were found structurally wanting, we have seen no evidence of any effort to scale up the State’s ability to respond.