Yorgen Fenech Acquitted Over Daphne Caruana Galizia Murder as Malta Erupts in Backlash
Malta Rocked by Yorgen Fenech Acquittal Nearly Nine Years After Journalist’s Car-Bomb Murder
The Verdict That Reopened Malta’s Deepest Wound
Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech has been acquitted of charges that he was involved in commissioning the 2017 assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, delivering a dramatic ending to one of Europe’s most closely watched murder trials. Eight of the nine jurors voted to clear Fenech of both complicity in murder and criminal association on 2 September 2026, leaving Malta without anyone convicted of ordering the killing nearly nine years after the journalist was blown up outside her home.
The verdict triggered anger from Caruana Galizia’s family, criticism from international press-freedom groups and an immediate political confrontation in Valletta. Malta’s government has appealed for prudence and restraint, but the case is not simply disappearing: testimony from the trial is being passed into two continuing magisterial inquiries and to police to assess whether other people could face criminal proceedings.
Eight of Nine Jurors Cleared Fenech
Fenech, 44, had faced charges of complicity in the voluntary homicide of Caruana Galizia and criminal association to commit murder. His trial opened in Valletta on 1 July and ran for almost two months before jurors retired to consider a case built from witness evidence, recordings, messages, forensic material and years of investigation.
The threshold for a valid verdict required at least six jurors to agree. Eight voted to acquit Fenech on both counts, meaning the decision was not a narrow technical escape but a decisive rejection by the jury of the prosecution’s criminal case against him.
Fenech had consistently denied ordering Caruana Galizia’s death. When he gave evidence during the trial, he categorically rejected involvement in the assassination and his defence attacked the credibility of the prosecution case, particularly the evidence surrounding Melvin Theuma, who had received a presidential pardon in return for information about the murder.
The Prosecution’s Mastermind Case Collapsed
Prosecutors had accused Fenech of commissioning the killing and argued that Caruana Galizia posed a threat because of investigative work involving powerful business and political interests. Her final period of reporting included work connected to the Electrogas energy project, in which Fenech was a significant shareholder.
The prosecution relied heavily on Theuma, who admitted acting as a middleman and was pardoned in 2019 in exchange for information. The defence challenged his reliability and argued that Fenech was not the man responsible for ordering the assassination.
Fenech’s defence also directed attention towards Keith Schembri, the former chief of staff to then-prime minister Joseph Muscat. Schembri has denied any involvement in the murder, while police evidence presented to the court said he had not been treated as a suspect in the killing. Muscat himself has never been linked to the murder and resigned as prime minister in January 2020 amid the enormous political fallout surrounding the investigation.
The jury’s decision does not establish who, if anyone else, commissioned the assassination. It establishes something narrower but legally decisive: prosecutors failed to persuade the required number of jurors beyond reasonable doubt that Fenech was criminally responsible for the offences with which he was charged.
Five Men Have Already Been Convicted
Caruana Galizia was 53 when a bomb planted beneath the driver’s seat of her car exploded near her home in Bidnija on 16 October 2017. Her murder shocked Malta and Europe because she had spent years investigating alleged corruption, organised crime links and the financial relationships surrounding some of the country’s most powerful political and business figures.
The assassination itself is not an unsolved crime in the conventional sense. Five men have been convicted for roles in carrying it out or providing the explosive device.
Vincent Muscat admitted involvement and was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2021. Brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio later pleaded guilty and each received 40-year sentences in 2022, while Robert Agius and Jamie Vella were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2025 for supplying the bomb; their convictions and life sentences were confirmed on appeal in January 2026.
That leaves the most politically explosive question unresolved. People have been punished for supplying and executing the assassination, but after Fenech’s acquittal Malta still has no person convicted of commissioning it.
Malta’s Government Urges Restraint
The Maltese government responded to the verdict by appealing for caution in public discussion, saying institutions must be allowed to continue their work. It warned that comments or actions should not prejudice continuing judicial or investigative proceedings and reaffirmed that the state would provide the resources needed for institutions to perform their functions.
That warning matters because the Criminal Court has not treated the conclusion of Fenech’s trial as the end of every potential investigative avenue. Madam Justice Edwina Grima ordered testimony from the proceedings to be transmitted to two ongoing magisterial inquiries and also sent the material to the Commissioner of Police so authorities can assess whether third parties could potentially face criminal proceedings.
There is also a limited legal route concerning the acquittal itself. The Attorney General can challenge issues arising from the verdict on points of law, but does not have a conventional right to reopen the jury’s factual assessment simply because prosecutors disagree with its conclusion.
Anger Spills Back Into Maltese Politics
The verdict produced an immediate public and political reaction. Caruana Galizia’s son Matthew condemned the jury’s decision, while the opposition Nationalist Party organised a silent demonstration outside the prime minister’s office and called for parliament to be recalled from its summer recess.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola also signalled that the search for full justice would continue. Press-freedom organisations were even more forceful, arguing that almost nine years after the murder Malta has still failed to establish criminal responsibility for whoever ultimately commissioned the assassination.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said the absence of a convicted mastermind created a damaging precedent beyond Malta, while Reporters Without Borders described the outcome as a failure to achieve full justice. Malta ranks 67th out of 180 countries and territories in the organisation’s 2026 World Press Freedom Index.
The Public Inquiry Still Hangs Over Malta
The criminal verdict also sits beside a separate and uncomfortable institutional finding. Malta’s 2021 public inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s assassination concluded that the state had to shoulder responsibility for creating conditions in which the murder became possible and for failing adequately to protect her.
That inquiry was not a criminal trial of Fenech and its conclusions cannot substitute for proof against an individual defendant. The distinction is crucial: a jury can find that prosecutors have not proved one man guilty beyond reasonable doubt while broader findings about institutional failure, press freedom and the state’s responsibilities remain intact.
Five years after the inquiry, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation said in July 2026 that most of its recommendations still had not been implemented. The foundation argued that shortcomings identified after the assassination continued to leave journalists exposed to systemic risks.
Former prime minister Joseph Muscat has now argued that the public inquiry should have been conducted after Fenech’s criminal trial rather than before it, saying a later inquiry would have been able to consider the evidence presented to the jury. He nevertheless said the verdict must be respected under the rule of law even where people disagree with it.
What Happens Next
The immediate criminal case against Fenech has ended in acquittal, subject to the Attorney General’s tightly constrained ability to raise legal issues. The more consequential next moves may instead come from the two magisterial inquiries, the police examination of testimony concerning possible third parties and the mounting political fight over what Malta has learned from the assassination.
For Caruana Galizia’s family and supporters, the central question has therefore changed rather than disappeared. Five men have been convicted for roles in a sophisticated car-bomb assassination, yet the state still has no convicted person who ordered it.
That gap will now carry even greater weight. The Fenech verdict is an acquittal that must be treated as such, not evidence of some alternative suspect’s guilt, but it also leaves Malta confronting the same question that has followed the country since October 2017: who decided Daphne Caruana Galizia had to die, and can the justice system ever prove it?
