Lawyer claims Schembri abused of Security Service info to alert Caruana Galizia murderers

The Nationalist MP and lawyer of the Caruana Galizia family has issued a public statement on Facebook, accusing Keith Schembri of being “one of the criminal masterminds” in the assassination of the late journalist.

Schembri, the former chief of staff to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, resigned yesterday after being taken under arrest soon after Tumas magnate Yorgen Fenech was alleged to have name-dropped him during investigations into the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination.

“I write this out of my responsibility as a Member of Parliament,” Azzopardi said on Facebok. “Keith Schembri is one of the criminal masterminds in the assassination of Daphne. He paid out money for this.”

Azzopardi also said that Schembri had alerted the three men accused of carrying out the murder – George Degiorgio ‘ic-Ciniz’, Alfred Degiorgio ‘il-Fulu’, and Vincent Muscat ‘il-Kohhu’ – prior to their arrest in December 2017, “abusing of MSS secret information.”

Azzopardi added that as recently as last week, Schembri was sending written messages to Yorgen Fenech under police bail “telling him what to say and not”.

Azzopardi then turned his guns on Joseph Muscat. “You have blood on your hands. Filth, killers, corrupt, criminals. You have been keeping this inside you, defending Schembri for two years.”

Azzopardi released no further comment to MaltaToday when asked whether his information had emerged during the questioning of Schembri today, under arrest.

In November 2018, the lead inspector in the ongoing investigation of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia had called Azzopardi’s claim that the three suspects were tipped off prior to their arrest ‘baseless’ and ‘speculation’.

The Malta Police Force had refuted the allegations, insisting that it had never received any information about a leak from the murder investigation.

Keith Arnaud had reacted to the claims on Facebook, saying the speculation could only jeopardize the ongoing criminal proceedings, “hinder the ongoing investigation and taint the hard work that with dedication has so far been achieved. Please leave politics away from such sensitive investigations.”

“It is incredible how certain statements are said even though they supposedly know that those are not the facts! It is a pity that not everyone’s agenda is the same and so I arrive at the conclusion that they hardly care about the damage that these extra words can cause.”