The Maltese man who was hired as a lookout to keep an eye on Panama Papers journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia before she was murdered in October 2017, told a court he and her killers were arguing over whether or not to kill her with a gun. up close – they finally decided it was “too noisy” – before he sat on a bomb because it was “cleaner”.
Vincent Muscat ‘il-Koħħu’, who is serving a 15-year sentence after pleading guilty for his role in Galizia’s murder, apologized to her family ahead of his five-hour testimony on Thursday, according to The Times of Malta and other media reports. “I have acknowledged all charges against me and I have been convicted,” he told the court.
He then painted a picture of the plot to kill her with precision, including how he and fellow suspect Alfred Degiorgio spent their time watching the journalist closely in cafes and through the windows of her Maltese home using an autofocus telescope. ‘We would be sitting there on two rocks. It was uncomfortable and you would get painful, ”he said. ‘Sometimes I went to get food. I bought three packs of Rothmans Red a day. We threw the butts away in a water bottle, so as not to leave a trace. We watched Daphne on her couch with a laptop until 2am. “
Seven people have been charged with murder and complicity, including Maltese tycoon Yorgen Fenech, who, according to Muscat, devised the plot. Fenech, who was arrested while trying to sail to Italy, has denied the charge.
Muscat described how he took the job of killing her. “Alfred Degiorgio came up to me and told me there was a good job for me,” he told the court. “The plan was to follow her steps and shoot her when the time was right.”
He then described how he and the others were paid an advance of € 30,000 in € 50 banknotes. “We each took € 10,000 and got to work. Alfred and I followed her to Bidnija, ”he said, referring to her home village. He then said the original plan was to kill her in her house.
At one point, they planned to carry out her execution with a sniper rifle with a telescopic sight on it. Alfred Degiorgio was ready to pull the trigger, but his brother George Degiorgio called the hit, telling the men that it was “too noisy” and that they were likely to be caught. “A bomb will be easier to install, much cleaner,” they decided.
“The plan was to have Alfred shot out from under the tree,” he said, according to Maltese media reports. “I was going to get him from the crime scene in a stolen car. As soon as he fired, I had to raise the gate so we could escape. “
Muscat also named several people close to former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s circle, whom he said ordered the hit, including Malta’s former Economy Minister Chris Cardona, and former Muscat Chief of Staff Keith Schembri. Muscat, the noted murderer, is not related to Muscat, the former prime minister.
During the testimony, Galizia’s sons live tweeted some of the gruesome details. “Alfred Degiorgio took a small water bottle, filled it with gasoline and tied it to the bomb to make the impact even more devastating,” tweeted Matthew Caruana Galizia. “It was made of stainless steel, sophisticated, clearly foreign-made … It had a slot for a SIM card.”
The two men had a supply of weapons in their car to help them escape. “We had guns in the car,” he said. “There was a 9mm automatic that needed a 16-shot magazine, and an AK-47 in the car in case we ran into a roadblock.”
When the journalist’s sons and husband listened, Muscat described the bomb as being so powerful that she steered her car off the road into a nearby field, literally blowing her body to pieces. “Six inches thick, three inches wide and three inches long,” he said, using his hands to indicate the approximate size. “It was a neat bomb, it had a stainless steel front.”
He went on to say it had a slot for a SIM card to control the blast with high precision. “The bomb came with a cell phone. It had a switch. You send a specific message to the SIM card on the bomb, ”he said. “It contained about 500 g of explosive.”
Then he added that it was so important to the people who hired them to make sure they didn’t survive that they reinforced the bomb. “We attached a gasoline bottle to it in case it wasn’t strong enough,” he said.
They also ‘got’ a car identical to Galizia’s so they could practice opening the rear window and placing the bomb under the driver’s seat. He also said that Alfred Degiorgio apparently once had to deal with two groups who wanted to hire them both to kill Galizia. “One time Alfred told me that Cardona had sent me a message,” he said, referring to the former economy minister. “He mentioned the € 150,000. He said there are two groups … they quoted the same price. “
On the night before she was murdered, Muscat said he had been called to pick up the bomb from a garage in the suburbs of Valletta. Galizia had left her car outside that night instead of in the garage, giving them a perfect opportunity to plant the deadly explosive. They installed the bomb in the middle of the night and carried it to her car in a backpack.
Then they met at 6 a.m. on the morning of the murder and waited for hours before she came out. “‘Sometime, she’s coming out,’ Degiorgio said to me … but she went back in,” said Muscat. “Shortly afterwards she reappeared, it was as if she had forgotten something.”
Then Galizia got into her car and pulled out of her driveway and into a winding road. They detonated the bomb just before the road submerged, Muscat testified. We walked back to the car. We have not heard anything, ”Muscat told the court. Alfred said, ‘I don’t think it exploded. I looked back and saw black smoke. I swear, Your Honor, we haven’t heard of that. We only heard a soft sound. “
Muscat then told the court that he was shocked by the national and international attention the murder generated. He said he had no idea how important she was or the impact of what they had done.