Daphne Caruana Galizia murder | What we learnt so far from police testimony

The compilation of evidence against George Degiorgio, his brother Alfred Degiorgio and Vince Muscat finally started on Tuesday afternoon with the testimony of lead investigator Inspector Keith Arnaud.

The court had earlier turned down requests by the defence for the magistrate to recuse herself.

Arnaud gave a blow-by-blow account of how investigators meticulously arrived at identifying the accused through mobile phone location data and intercepts. Journalists were asked out of the courtroom for a brief period while Arnaud gave sensitive information, shortly after saying the mobile phones of the accused were intercepted by the Security Service.

Inspector Arnaud is expected to continue testifying on Wednesday morning.

Here is what we learnt so far:

The wreckage of the car, Daphne Caruana Galizia was driving

Caruana Galizia’s car

• The Peugeot car Daphne Caruana Galizia was driving at the time had been leased four months before
• Her son Matthew Caruana Galizia had occasionally used the car in the period
• Matthew was the last person to have parked the car outside the gate of the family’s Bidnija home
• Investigators dismantled a similar model of the car to determine whether any debris collected from the crime scene was extraneous
• This led the police to discover the presence of an electronic board, which was part of the SIM card dock on the explosive device

The ‘small white car’

• A person who spoke to the police had noticed a “small white car” frequenting a particular area at Tat-Targa Battery, part of the Victoria Lines
• On the day of the murder the white car was there but unlike previous occasions the driver was not inside
• Police noticed that next to where the car used to be parked part of a wall had collapsed and led to a place with a birds-eye view of Bidnija
• Forensic experts combed the area for any clues, including cigarette butts
• After the murder, the car was never seen again
• Given Caruana Galizia did not have a fixed pattern of movement, police believe someone was shadowing her movements

The detonator

• Location data from the Bidnija area led the police to home in on a number that received an SMS at 2.58pm and stopped broadcasting thereafter
• The number was linked to an electronic device normally found in appliances that can be activated remotely
• This device acted as the detonator of the car bomb
• The device was switched on in the Bidnija area at around 2am on 16 October
• It remained in a static location for the day until it received an SMS and disappeared

A Nokia 105 similar to the one from which the SMS that detonated the car bomb was sent

The killer SMS

• The SMS that triggered the bomb was sent from a Nokia 105 mobile phone connected to the cell tower near the YMCA in Valletta
• This phone was switched on, on the day of the explosion and started broadcasting from a cell ID near the Curia
• The signal moved to Paceville, Senglea, Rinella, Zabbar and Xghajra as it bounced from cell towers north and south of the country every hour
• The cell towers all faced seawards that led police to suspect the mobile phone was on a boat circling the island
• The number linked to the detonator and the number that sent the SMS had been set up in November 2016 and had only corresponded with each other on three occasions

The pleasure boats

• The Degiorgio brothers both own pleasure boats
• CCTV footage showed that one of them – the Maya – was spotted leaving the Grand Harbour at around 8am before turning north
• At the time the killer SMS was sent, the Maya was spotted under the Great Siege Bell area, where it stopped for a few minutes before heading towards Marsa

The top up call

• The Secret Service had intercepted a call from George Degiorgio’s phone, asking the recipient to top him up with €5
• The person was unable to and Degiorgio called another person, asking the same question “Don’t take long, if you can,” Degiorgio told the person
• The person complied and minutes later topped up the number identified by George Degiorgio
• Police obtained call profiles relating to George Degiorgio, Alfred Degiorgio and Vince Muscat
• All mobile numbers involved were activated within 20 minutes of each other – two were activated in Senglea and the third in Hamrun