A jury in Malta on Wednesday acquitted the Maltese businessman accused by prosecutors of being the mastermind behind the 2017 car bomb killing of crusading investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, sparking renewed calls for accountability in the Mediterranean island nation. Caruana Galizia's killing shocked Europe, led to protests that toppled a prime minister and exposed a culture of impunity in the European Union's smallest state. 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 and of having ordered and paid for it. He pleaded not guilty and the jury on Wednesday, in an 8-1 vote, found him not guilty on both counts. Fenech was greeted with jeers outside the courtroom and the opposition Nationalist Party organized a demonstration late Wednesday to demand justice.
Fenech was the last of a half-dozen people charged in the plot to be prosecuted. Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed on Oct. 16, 2017, by a car bomb that was detonated while she was driving near her home. She had written extensively about suspected corruption in political and business circles in Malta, with investigative reports targeting 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 leaders in Malta. She was called a "one-woman WikiLeaks." The former prime minister and his wife, Michelle, denied they had companies in Panama. At the time of Caruana Galizia's death, she was facing more than 40 libel suits.
"She knew that the powerful people that she was writing about were closing in on her," Galizia's son Paul told "60 Minutes" in 2018. "They were using every possible means to shut her down. She knew that, and that frightened her deeply." Her other son, Matthew Caruana Galizia, told "60 Minutes" in 2020 that he believes her gender played a role in how some of her story subjects reacted to her work.
Caruana Galizia's family had long insisted Muscat's administration showed little interest in solving her murder. 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. A report published by the inquiry said it didn't find proof of the government's direct involvement in Galizia's murder, but that it created a "favorable climate" for the journalist to be killed.
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