Misplaced indignation: The lost mobile phone Labour diehards ignore

‘Where is the laptop?’ This was the message emblazoned on several banners that mysteriously appeared overnight on 17 April 2018. The target was the Caruana Galizia family and the fact that the Maltese police were not handed the slain journalist’s laptop.

The tagline first appeared in a blogpost by Glenn Bedingfield, critical of civil society groups holding vigils marking Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder anniversary every 16th of the month. Today serving as home affairs minister, Bedingfield was a Labour MP and communications aide in the Office of the Prime Minister at the time and operated a private blog.

Overnight, banners appeared in key locations with OPM aides Neville Gafa and Josef Caruana sharing photos on their Facebook pages of the banners, and the Labour Party’s media arm, One News, doing a story about the banners, while insisting the missing laptop was crucial to investigators.

The government officially disassociated itself from the mysterious campaign even as key Labour exponents fanned the fire. Gafa went as far as using Daphne Caruana Galizia’s last words on her blog—‘The situation is desperate’—to mock the family.

The narrative was simple: The Caruana Galizia family was not really interested in solving the murder because it was withholding key information and yet had the gall to call Malta a mafia state.

The indignation over the missing laptop among swathes of Labour supporters was pulpable just six months after Caruana Galizia’s life was brutally terminated by a powerful car bomb. At the time, the police had arrested and charged the three hitmen and investigations were ongoing to identify the mastermind.

A powerful narrative

The missing laptop tagline lingered and came to represent a powerful narrative among Labour Party supporters. On social media exchanges about the murder, corruption and other controversial subjects, some Labour supporters would pop the question ‘Where is the laptop?’ to try and shut down government critics.

Even today—2026—as the trial by jury of Yorgen Fenech unfolds, diehard Labour supporters keep raising the laptop issue as if it were the biggest aberration in the whole case. It was not.

The family had deposited the journalist’s laptop and hard drives with the German Federal Police, fearing that her sources would be leaked and targeted if the laptop was given to the Maltese police. The fear wasn’t misplaced and today we know that sensitive information about the murder investigation was being leaked to mastermind suspect Yorgen Fenech by then OPM Chief of Staff Keith Schembri.

Indeed, Schembri is facing criminal proceedings for breaching the Official Secrets Act. He denies the charges and the case is ongoing.

In Fenech’s trial by jury lead investigator Keith Arnaud testified that the family, through Matthew Caruana Galizia, had provided the police with information from the laptop.

The other ‘missing’ device

But there is a much bigger issue concerning a missing device that somehow keeps falling below the radar of diehard Labour exponents—Keith Schembri’s ‘lost’ mobile phone.

During the Fenech trial by jury last week, lead investigator Keith Arnaud testified that when Schembri was arrested he informed police that he had lost his mobile phone. The last-known signal from Schembri’s device was emitted at around 5:04am on 26 November 2019 in Mellieħa and it was never switched on again. Schembri was arrested some 90 minutes later.

Cross-examined by Yorgen Fenech’s defence lawyers about the whereabouts of Schembri’s mobile phone, Arnaud confirmed that a cellular technology expert prepared a report on the matter.

The lead investigator explained that the report includes a map showing the mobile phone’s last known location, placing it in Mellieħa. At the time, Schembri lived in Mellieħa and was arrested at his home, which was also searched by police—in court Arnaud said only two police officers conducted the search.

Schembri had been interrogated after Fenech claimed the former OPM official had put down the initial deposit on the Caruana Galizia murder hit. Schembri was never charged and has always denied involvement in the murder or knowledge of the plot. Arnaud testified that the police could not corroborate Fenech’s claims and Schembri was released from police custody after 48 hours with no charge.

Misplaced indignation

This information did not emerge for the first time in Fenech’s trial by jury—it had been reported back in 2020 during the compilation of evidence stage. Nonetheless, it still raises question marks about Schembri’s behaviour just minutes before his arrest.

And yet, neither back then nor now was there any indignation from Labour diehards over the purported loss of a crucial device belonging to a very important person, who was very close to the man police charged as the murder mastermind.

Robert Abela during the Labour Party leadership race in January 2020 told his interviewer during a television broadcast that he did not believe Schembri lost his phone and urged police to use any available technology, if it existed, to find it. Ostensibly, that is the furthest rebuke of Schembri’s lost phone antics that has ever been made in public by a senior Labour Party official.

No banners went up asking ‘Where is the mobile phone?’. The Labour functionaries and diehards who asked for Caruana Galizia’s laptop were conspicuous by their silence at the time. And they remain so to this day because the indignation was selective. Indeed, even now, the biggest concern among Labour’s foot soldiers remains Daphne’s laptop not Keith’s missing devices.

Soft-touch treatment

Schembri’s ‘lost’ mobile phone would have infinitely been more useful to investigators in their search for the truth about the true relationship between Fenech and Schembri. Yet the mobile phone vanished seven years ago along with the information it contained and from the testimony we’ve heard so far it appears investigators accepted Schembri’s explanation that he lost it and moved on.

Arnaud’s testimony that only two police officers carried out a search of Schembri’s Mellieħa house, which was not a one-bedroom studio flat but a villa, says a lot about the effort that went into probing the government’s second-most powerful man after the prime minister at the time. This impression is further reinforced by the fact that Schembri’s office at Auberge de Castille was only searched many hours later.

Indeed, the simple but straightforward questions jurors put to Arnaud during his cross-examination last week reflected this sentiment.

Jurors asked: ‘Is it normal for just two people to conduct a search in Keith Schembri’s house, and why didn’t they search his office at Castille straight away?’; ‘Did Schembri’s phone location at 5am on 26 November 2019 correlate to where he said he was at that time?’; ‘Did you ask Melvin Theuma why Keith Schembri wanted to calm him down?’; ‘Did investigators ask why Melvin Theuma was offered a government job?’

Too many questions hang over the police investigation in relation to Schembri’s involvement with Fenech up to November 2019. And ‘Where is Daphne’s laptop?’ is certainly not one of them.

The man on trial

Nonetheless, while the ‘Where is Keith’s mobile?’ question remains pertinent, even if ignored by Labour diehards, the person currently on trial is not Schembri but Yorgen Fenech.

Fenech’s defence team have pursued a line of questioning so far that seeks to implicate Schembri in Caruana Galizia’s murder. Proving Schembri’s involvement is another thing altogether and yet on its own does little to exculpate Fenech from the charges he faces.

Fenech is charged with having commissioned Caruana Galizia’s murder, paid €150,000 for it and urged the hitmen, through middleman Melvin Theuma, to get on with the job.

The prosecution’s case rests on Theuma’s testimony and the recordings he made of conversations with Fenech and others, as well as evidence gathered from Fenech’s devices.

Theuma still has to testify in the jury and subsequently cross-examined by the defence.

Fenech is pleading not guilty.

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