Transcripts of police interrogations recorded as part of the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder investigation have been made available to one of the men accused of killing her.
George Degiorgio was informed he could access a copy of the transcripts by Mr Justice Toni Abela, who received them in a sealed envelope from the director of the criminal courts. Mr Degiorgio’s lawyer, William Cuschieri, did not appear in court despite being summoned several times.
The murder suspect has been demanding transcripts of phone taps which he says police “bragged” about but which were never presented in court during the compilation of evidence against him and his co-accused, his brother Alfred and Vincent Muscat.
All three stand accused of having murdered Ms Caruana Galizia in October 2017.
In the course of interrogations, police are understood to have played back a portion of those phone recordings to Mr Degiorgio. The transcripts handed over to him on Tuesday detail events during those interrogations and are not of the phone taps themselves.
The envelope containing the transcripts was opened in the presence of both parties during Tuesday’s hearing, with the judge making it clear that the documents were to be accessible only to parties in the case.
Mr Justice Abela is presiding over a constitutional case filed by Mr Degiorgio challenging phone tapping laws.
Mr Degiorgio had filed a judicial protest in August calling on the police commissioner and the attorney general to exhibit recordings and transcripts of the phone intercepts. When that did not happen, he filed a constitutional case challenging the validity of the phone tapping law itself.
In a previous hearing earlier this month, Mr Degiorgio’s lawyer had announced he would be summoning the police commissioner, the head of the security service and Caruana Galizia murder investigation’s chief prosecutor to testify.
The court’s strict order that the transcripts are only to be accessed by parties in the case comes just days after a criminal court was told by prosecutors that the Degiorgios’ lawyer had sent an FBI report on the Caruana Galizia murder inquiry to a US company extraneous to the case.
Madam Justice Edwina Grima had subsequently made it clear that the records of the case were to be accessible only to the parties involved.
The case continues later this month. Lawyer Abigail Caruana Vella from the AG’s Office assisted the respondents. Lawyers Therese Comodini Cachia, Jason Azzopardi and Karol Aquilina assisted the Caruana Galizia family.