Muscat after inquiry report takes to Facebook: ‘I paid ultimate political price’

Former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has declared he will accept the conclusions of the Caruana Galizia public inquiry, once again claiming he “paid the ultimate political price” with his resignation in December 2019.

Muscat said on Facebook he had already shouldered responsibility for his decisions “and also those [responsibilities] which were not”, with his resignation.

In the post, Muscat reiterated that he still held “serious reservations” on the inquiry’s “departure from its original Terms of Reference which I illustrated at length during my five-hour testimony last December, still stand, were not adequately addressed, and are further confirmed by the conclusions.”

Muscat said that there can never be any justification for the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, claiming he had acted differently in comparison to his predecessors in face of such homicides.

“There can never be any justification for the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. What happened on 16 October 2017 made me resolute not to act like my predecessors who paid lip service but did nothing about homicides that rocked the country.”

He said the inquiry found that the State had no prior knowledge of, or was involved in the assassination. “The report also unequivocally states that I was in no way implicated in the murder. While the Inquiry expressed its disapproval on my political judgement in the aftermath of the Panama Papers, it failed to point out that I took the decision to fetch another mandate in the following months, where the electorate judged me even on how I managed the situation.”

“It is to be noted that the Inquiry found that the State had no prior knowledge of, or was involved in the assassination. The report also unequivocally states that I was in no way implicated in the murder. While the Inquiry expressed its disapproval on my political judgement in the aftermath of the Panama Papers, it failed to point out that I took the decision to fetch another mandate in the following months, where the electorate judged me even on how I managed the situation.”

But he pointed out the inquiry failed to adequately acknowledge that the alleged hitmen were apprehended in less than two months.

“While the Inquiry affirms that a state of impunity was created, it fails to adequately acknowledge that the alleged hitmen were apprehended in less than two months and the alleged mastermind a few months later, following investigations involving amongst others Europol and FBI. This fact disproves any impression of impunity that the alleged perpetrators may have had. I maintain that there was impunity in cases before my term in office, where high profile crimes were committed but nobody was ever prosecuted.”