On Sunday 16th October 2017 in Bidnija, Malta, a car exploded at around 3 pm. Inside the Peugeot 108, reduced to pieces by the powerful explosion, there was Daphne Caruana Galizia, 53 years old Maltese journalist and mother of three, killed by the blast.
The journalist was quite famous for her writing she was described as a “one woman WikiLeaks” by the Politico website.
In her blog she was frequently accusing politicians of corruption.
She recently worked on the panama papers, in partnership with the Süddeutsche Zeitung and around 100 other media organizations.
The panama papers which have had all her focus in the last couple of years, is a leak of 11.5 million documents that linked government officials to 214,488 offshore organisations.
These documents were leaked in 2015 by an anonymous journalist from the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The documents were then shared with media partners around the world, by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington.
The three sons of the journalists were offered a million euro reward after the death of their mother, which they rejected; they also said they are not interested in justice without change.
They claim that their mother has been harassed and intimidated long before 2015, they also said that they grew up receiving threatening phone calls, letters as well as emails, lawsuits and comments on her blog.
As reported by the guardian the son Andrew said that in ninety-six their front door was set on fire and around that time as well, someone killed their dog slitting its throat and laying him on their doorstep.
One of Mrs Galizia’s sons also claimed that another serious attack had occurred in 2006 when they set on fire two big stacks of car tyres, right beside their house.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said he was “flabbergasted” when heard about the murder.
The British Minister of State for Europe, Sir Alan Duncan, offered the support of the UK Government in the investigation on the murder.
Interesting article…it’s evident that officials despise investigative journalists exercising their right to tell the truth to the public and maintain the role of the Fourth Estate.