George Degiorgio claims frame-up in Caruana Galizia murder case

George Degiorgio, one of three men charged with Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder is claiming to be the victim of a police frame-up in a constitutional application.

Degiorgio, known as iċ-Ċiniż, was identified by the police as the person who remotely triggered the bomb that killed the journalist.

Police evidence presented in court put Degiorgio on his boat, the Maia, below the Great Siege Bell in Grand Harbour, when the killer SMS was sent.

READ ALSO: FBI agents tell court killer SMS read '#REL1=ON'

Degiorgio allegedly received the signal from his brother Alfred Degiorgio, known as il-Fulu, who acted as a spotter in Bidnija along with Vincent Muscat, known as il-Koħħu.

Caruana Galizia was killed in a car bomb attack as she left her home in Bidnija on 16 October last year.

The three men were arrested in December and charged in court with the journalist’s murder. The compilation of evidence against the trio is ongoing. The three are known criminals with a string of high profile crimes to their name.

However, in a constitutional application filed on Monday morning, George Degiorgio’s lawyer, William Cuschieri is asking the court to declare that his client’s right to a fair hearing had been breached as the police were angling for evidence to justify his arrest.

Degiorgio is claiming that despite the prosecution exhibiting footage of the vessel Maia entering and leaving the Grand Harbour, one of the officials presenting it had testified that he was not morally certain that the vessel shown was in fact the Maia.

The police had requested the court to nominate experts to identify all the vessels which entered and exited the Grand Harbour between 2.30pm and 3.30pm on 16 October 2017 and compare them with a photograph of the Maia.

It was “evident that the prosecution not only did not have proof that Degiorgio was on board the particular vessel, but did not even have proof that it was the particular vessel that appeared on the footage”.

This was not a case where the court needed to appoint a technical expert as “here we are talking about a boat that is unrecognisable”, Cuschieri said.

He dismissed the request as “nothing but a suggestive question” so that the experts confirm the pretext upon which the accused was arrested.

“The behaviour and request of the prosecution, which took place now around 10 months after his arraignment under arrest on a supposition without any evidence, is nothing but an attempt at a frame up in his [Degiorgio’s] regard,” said the lawyer.