Ex-PL deputy leader calls for inquiry into Daphne Public Inquiry

Lawyer and former PL deputy leader Joe Brincat has filed a judicial protest, attacking the integrity of the public inquiry into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia and one of the retired judges who formed part of the Inquiry Board, requesting the State Advocate to investigate with an inquiry of his own.

Brincat had previously written publicly expressing his dissatisfaction with the findings of the inquiry, saying it had itself breached the rule of law.

He claimed the right to file the judicial protest, which is normally followed up by a court case, in his capacity as a Maltese citizen and part of the Maltese State, which he said was indicted by the inquiry report. “The State is not only Cabinet, not only Castille, but also the other constitutional organs of the country, including the judiciary and ordinary citizens of the country,” Brincat argued.

Brincat claimed that the inquiry board had not been administered an oath of impartiality “as a sign of goodwill,” saying that this was contrary to the rule of law.

“The rule of law requires the inquiry to remain within its parameters, and in its parameters it was not given charge or authority or requested to make its recommendations.” The Board’s recommendations were ultra vires, Brincat said, adding that “nobody has the right to ignore the laws of the land and do whatever he likes.”

The Labour party stalwart said he disagreed with the conclusions and “certainly could not agree with the recommendations, amongst them the apology for what happened, in the name of the Maltese State of which he forms part.”

Doing so would require the State apologising for every murder that takes place, he said.

Brincat turned his guns on inquiry board member and former Chief Justice Joseph Said Pullicino, who he described as a consultant to the Ombudsman. In a 2019 report that the Ombudsman had presented to the Speaker of the House, he had “substantially said all the things that were said in the inquiry and therefore there is incontrovertible evidence that the judge had already pronounced himself…on the merits of the same issue.”

The Ombudsman’s report had also “included theories built not on facts but on suppositions. Amongst them he speaks of an ‘air of impunity’” Brincat claims.

Brincat’s judicial protest urged the State Advocate to immediately begin an inquiry to establish whether everything was done correctly by the board of inquiry.