Brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio pleaded guilty, just hours after the trial against them, to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist who was murdered five years ago.
The turning point, announced by their lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace, arrived in the courtroom where the first hearing of the trial against them had just resumed – after a break for lunch. The two brothers entered the courtroom this morning pleading not guilty, and are accused of having been accused of planting the bomb that detonated the woman’s car as she drove near her home on October 16, 2017.
The Degiorgio brothers – who risk 40 years in prison – would have decided to confess in exchange for a reduction in their sentence, which has not yet been specified.
Malta, ten arrests for murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia
by GIULIANO FOSCHINI
The Degiorgio brothers were arrested in early December 2017, just 42 days after the murder, thanks to the joint work of the police from all over the world, starting with the FBI, Europol, Scotland Yard, as well as Italy, Finland, Holland and France. For years they kept silent, despite the accusations and revelations of the repentant: the intermediary, the former taxi driver and usurer Melvin Theuma, who obtained the grave amnesty for the tests that also framed the principal Yorgen Fenech; and their accomplice Vincent Muscat (who works as a handyman for the Degiorgio family), who has already bargained for 15 years in prison.