One of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s suspect murderers has been granted permission to appeal an October 16 court decree that had rejected his request to suspend criminal proceedings.

George Degiorgio had asked the First Hall, Civil Court to suspend the pre-trial hearing of preliminary objections scheduled for Thursday, pending judgment in a separate constitutional case challenging the validity of phone tapping laws.

In these proceedings, George Degiorgio’s lawyer, William Cuschieri, called on the authorities to produce evidence of telephone intercepts that the prosecution had “bragged about” throughout the compilation of evidence and which had allegedly been crucial in targeting the applicant, his brother Alfred Degiorgio and Vincent Muscat, as the suspect murderers.

On October 16, exactly two years since the car bomb that killed  Caruana Galizia, Mr Justice Toni Abela had rejected the request for a suspension. That decision prompted Degiorgio's lawyer to file another application asking that same court to grant “special permission” for an appeal, stating that it would  be “better and just” for the matter to be assessed by the Constitutional Court.

Mr Justice Abela upheld that request on Wednesday but said proceedings in the phone tapping case could continue. 

He observed that the request to suspend the criminal proceedings had only been put forward by one of the accused, in spite of the fact that his claim would also affect the interests of the other two co-accused. The court could not presume that the other two co-accused shared the same interest.