Updated | Prisons director asked to investigate leaks about three men accused of Daphne’s murder

The magistrate hearing the compilation of evidence against three men charged with the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has ordered the prisons director to investigate leaks to the media.

Vincent Muscat, 55, known as il-Kohhu, Alfred Degiorgio, 53, known as il-Fulu, and his brother George Degiorgio, 55, known as Ic-Ciniz, were arrested on 10 December and later charged with the journalist’s murder.

As the compilation continued this morning in front of Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit, lawyer Martin Fenech, defence counsel for Muscat, said that information about the three accused was being leaked to the media from inside the prison.

His request for the court to order an investigation into the leaks was not opposed by the prosecution.

Stafrace Zammit referred Fenech’s request to the director of prisons, although she noted this was not the first case in which information had been leaked to the media.

The magistrate then overruled objections by the defense, after Inspector Kurt Zahra asked for an inventory list of all items found at the Marsa potato shed when the three men were arrested in December.

Fenech objected and said the police did not have a search warrant on the day of the arrest and that the search in the locality was therefore illegal.

But Zahra argued that the accused had been told they were under arrest and that the shed had to be sealed off and searched as part of the police investigations.

Ivan Falzon testified that he had sold his boat, the Maya, to George Degiorgio for €30,000 cash in February 2017. A Transport Malta representative subsequently told the court that Alfred, not George, Degiorgio was registered as the boat’s owner.

Panel beater Jesmond Pace testified that the keys to Caruana Galizia's leased Peugeot 108, which needed repairs, had been posted in a letterbox two doors down from his last September by a Percius representative. He had contacted the letterbox owner and retrieved the keys some days later and got to work fixing the car.

Juan Mula, a police sergeant with the police counter-terrorism unit and who responded to the emergency call on October 16, told the court that he two men arguing further up the road from where the blazing car came to a stop in Bidnija. He said he could not identify the two men

More to follow.