Former minister Chris Cardona and lawyer David Gatt will be summoned to testify in the trial by jury of the four men accused with supplying the bomb that killed journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, a court ruled.
Madam Justice Edwina Grima, in the Criminal Court, ruled that Cardona and Gatt are to be included among the defence witnesses summoned to testify during the trial.
She granted “special permission” for their names to be included in the list of defence witnesses to ensure that the accused were not denied the chance to produce evidence that was deemed important.
She handed down the ruling as she continued to hear pre-trial pleas in the case against Jamie Vella, George Degiorgo and Maksar brothers Adrian and Robert Agius.
The men are facing criminal charges for their alleged involvement in the assassination of the journalist – who was killed in a car bomb close to her home in October 2017 - as well as in the murder of lawyer Carmel Chircop, who was shot dead in the doorway of his Birkirkara garage in 2015.
In a previous sitting, Jamie Vella’s lawyer, Ishmael Psaila, filed a court application requesting that Cardona and Gatt testify in the trial. They argued that the prosecution is withholding evidence from hitman Vince Muscat’s testimony, known as il-Koħħu.
The court application stated that in Muscat's testimony he implicated Cardona and Gatt in both the 2015 and 2017 plans to murder Caruana Galizia.
The court previously heard that in 2015, there was an abandoned plan to murder the journalist. Cardona was already implicated by Muscat in this 2015 plot.
The court application argued that the prosecution was very selective with Muscat's witness testimony as it disregarded allegations made against Cardona and Gatt. It also said it was not clear whether or not Cardona or Gatt were ever questioned or investigated.
Psaila added that the prosecution “conveniently” focused on investigating the four people on trial for this case, rather than Cardona and Gatt.
Through this court application, the defence requested confirmation on whether or not Cardona and Gatt have been investigated and requesting that they testify before trial commences.
Attorney General lawyers Anthony Vella and Godwin Cini contested this request. They argued that the defence did not explain the relevance that these parts of Muscat’s testimony had to do with this case.
Even if Caruana and Gatt are brought forward to testify, they have every right not to say a word, they said.
In her ruling Madam Justice Grima said that she was “perplexed” why the defence had raised this issue now – on the eve of the trial by jury. She found that there was no need for the case to be sent back before the magistrate’s courts to hear the testimony of Cardona and Gatt – as was being requested by the defence. This would delay the process unnecessarily.
However, she ruled that to ensure that Vella was not denied the chance to present evidence that he deemed important in his defence, she gave special permission to add the names of Cardona and Gatt to the list of defence witnesses. They have the right to choose not to reply to questions put to them, so as not to incriminate themselves.
The judge also added that one of the prosecution’s witnesses was Superintendent Keith Arnaud, who was a lead investigator. The defence could put any questions, regarding who was and is being investigated, to him during cross-examination during the trial.