A jury in Malta on Wednesday acquitted the Maltese businessman accused of being the mastermind of the 2017 car bomb killing of crusading investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Caruana Galizia’s killing shocked Europe, led to protests that toppled a prime minister and exposed a culture of impunity on the Mediterranean island nation, the European Union’s smallest.
Yorgen Fenech, a prominent Maltese businessman, was indicted in 2021 on charges of complicity and criminal conspiracy. Prosecutors accused him of being the mastermind of the slaying.
He pleaded not guilty. The jury on Wednesday found him not guilty on both counts.
Fenech was the last of a half-dozen people charged in the plot to be prosecuted. No cameras were allowed in the courtroom, as is typical in Maltese criminal trials.
A woman targeted for her anti-corruption investigations
Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed on Oct. 16, 2017, by a car bomb that was detonated while she was driving near her home.
Her investigative reports had targeted people in then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s inner circle whom she accused of having offshore companies in tax havens disclosed in the Panama Papers leak. She also targeted the opposition and business circles in Malta.
At the time of her death, she was facing more than 40 libel suits.
An independent inquiry into the killing published in 2021 concluded that the Maltese state “has to bear responsibility” for the assassination due to a culture of impunity that emanated from the highest levels of government.