Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia has told this newspaper that the government's offer of a million euros reward for information leading to identification of the mastermind behind the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has so far resulted in "no real and tangible leads".
Last October, the government offered a reward of one million euros to anyone who could give concrete information leading to the mastermind behind the 16 October 2017 murder.
Asked by this newsroom this week if anyone had come forward to the police or the government with qualifying information, Farrugia replied: "There have been a handful of people who have come forward, but the information they had was not supported by any proof or hard evidence.
"Unless the police can ultimately identify the perpetrator, or perpetrators, who commissioned this killing through information and proof obtained by such a third party, the government will not pay out the million euros reward."
Farrugia confirmed that the offer remains open and that the government has no intention to remove it for the time being.
He said that the arraignment of the three men accused of planting and triggering the bomb was the result of police investigations and not through leads from third parties.
The accused were arrested by the police on 4 December 2017, with the assistance of the Malta Security Services, the Armed Forces of Malta, Europol and the FBI after they had "conducted forensic investigations which led them to accuse George Degiorgio and his brother Alfred Degiorgio, together with Vince Muscat."
At the time of their arrest, Farrugia said, the police had a substantial amount of evidence in hand, which is now being presented in court.
A few days after the journalist's assassination, the government issued a statement saying that "this is a case of extraordinary importance which requires extraordinary measures".
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had said that the government would offer a 'substantial' reward of one million euros to anyone with information about the crime, and full protection to anyone with information on who was involved in the murder which, over eight months on, continues to make headlines the world over.
"The government is fully committed to solving the murder" and to "bringing those responsible to justice," Muscat said at the time.
But within a few hours of the government's statement, Caruana Galizia's sons Matthew, Andrew and Paul said in a Facebook post that the reward would not change anything that their mother had been fighting for: "We are not interested in justice without change. We are not interested in a criminal conviction only for the people in government who stood to gain from our mother's murder to turn around and say that justice has been served.
"Justice, beyond criminal liability, will only be served when everything that our mother fought for – political accountability, integrity in public life and an open and free society – replaces the desperate situation we are in," they said.
"The government is interested in only one thing: its reputation and the need to hide the gaping hole where our institutions once were. This interest is not ours."
from The Malta Independent https://ift.tt/2lMllOX
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