Repubblika calls jurors’ comment on Caruana Galizia’s children ‘profoundly cruel’

Repubblika has condemned an alleged comment from a juror in Yorgen Fenech’s trial on assasinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia's children, calling it “profoundly cruel”

Reacting on Sunday morning, the rule-of-law NGO called the comment, which said that the children of assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia did not mourn their mother, “profoundly cruel”.

“The fact that, according to the report, this comment came from someone entrusted with assessing the evidence in the case makes the matter more serious,” Repubblika said. The Times of Malta reported on Sunday on messages and comments attributed to jurors in the trial.

Repubblika said the children lost their mother to assassination and have spent nine years fighting for truth and justice. No one should presume to measure their grief, still less mock it, it added.

“The hostile comments allegedly made before the trial, and the alleged failure to disclose them to the Court, raise serious questions about the impartiality on which justice was supposed to rest,” the NGO said.

It said Daphne was not the accused, highlighting that a juror’s opinion of her, her writing or her family should have had no place in deciding the guilt or innocence of someone accused of her assassination, and that decision should have rested exclusively on the evidence.

“These revelations give a more concrete and frightening meaning to the ‘atmosphere of impunity’ that the Public Inquiry found had been created under Joseph Muscat’s government,” it said.

The NGO said the campaign of hatred against Daphne, directed from Castille and documented by the Public Inquiry, created a climate of prejudice, hostility, violent ill will and isolation. It was in that climate, it said, that her killers could believe they would murder her and get away with it.

The logic of the campaign was clear, Repubblika said: to turn Daphne into such a hated figure that people would cease to see her as a human being with the same right to protection and justice as anyone else. “This dehumanisation extends to her family,” it said.

Repubblika said it expects the authorities to investigate the reported facts thoroughly and the Courts to examine their implications for the proceedings.

However, it said it would be a serious mistake if accountability stopped at the alleged conduct of individual jurors.

Justice remains undelivered, the NGO said, until all those who contributed to this injustice are held accountable. That includes both those who allegedly failed in their duty during the proceedings and those who sowed and nurtured prejudice and hatred.

“At the very least, those who bear political responsibility for this campaign should no longer hold public office,” Repubblika said.

On the anniversary of her assassination, Repubblika will march from outside Parliament in Valletta to the Law Courts on 16 October at 7pm to renew its demand for justice for Daphne and her family.