Yorgen Fenech lawyers demand to see murdered journalist’s laptops

Daphne Caruana Galizia murder suspect Yorgen Fenech’s lawyers have requested the exhibition of the murdered journalist’s laptops and hard drives, saying they contain important evidence that would prove his innocence by contradicting evidence by star prosecution witness Melvin Theuma.

In the application filed before the court of Magistrates, the lawyers wrote that Theuma had claimed that Fenech had commissioned him to find someone to get rid of Caruana Galizia because she was about to publish a story about his uncle.

“In view of this, the laptops and hard drives belonging to the victim are of great importance to the defence in order to prove his innocence as well as to contrast it with that testified by Melvin Theuma.”

Theuma, who testified at length in several proceedings related to the murder, has on occasion been criticised by the court for his convoluted and contradictory explanations.

In his interrogation with lead investigator Keith Arnaud, Theuma had categorically claimed that Fenech first tasked him to engage the Degiorgios to carry out the murder, a fortnight after the 2017 election, over some information Caruana Galizia would have published on his uncle, Ray Fenech. Theuma however also added that he later surmised, through Fenech’s own insistence, that the information Caruana Galizia was about to release concerned Yorgen Fenech himself.

The application, which was signed by lawyers Gianluca Caruana Curran, Marion Camilleri and Charles Mercieca, argued that the Police had the obligation to gather and preserve all the evidence related to the murder, both in favour and against the accused. “This must include two laptops and three hard drives used by the victim at the time of the murder.”

The devices had been transported to Germany for safekeeping in the aftermath of the murder, and the German authorities had subsequently refused to hand them over to their Maltese counterparts. 

The Constitutional court, in its judgment in the case of Alfred Degiorgio vs The Commissioner of Police and the Attorney General from December 2019, had directed that this evidence must be requested during the compilation of evidence before the compiling magistrate, said the lawyers, asking the court to order this be done.