Lawyer and former Labour Minister Joe Brincat is claiming that the public inquiry into the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination breached the rule of law and is calling upon the State Advocate to kickstart an inquiry into the matter. 

Brincat had already gone public with his disagreement with various conclusions reached by the inquiry board, which was made up of three judges. He has now taken his arguments before the courts, claiming that as a citizen of Malta and member of the State, he had every right to do so. 

Brincat's objections were highlighted by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, in an interview he gave to Times of Malta last week. 

In a judicial protest filed on Monday, Brincat argued that the State was not simply the Cabinet or Castille “but all constitutional bodies of the country including the judiciary and ordinary citizens."

The public inquiry was bound by its terms of reference, which did not state that the board was to make recommendations as it deemed fit, such as the recommendation that the State was to tender an apology for what had happened, said Brincat.

If that was the case, then the State ought to apologise for every murder that took place, the lawyer remarked. 

Each recommendation fell beyond the inquiry’s terms of reference and was thus clearly ultra vires, said Brincat.

“No one has the right to ignore the country’s laws and do as he willed,” Brincat argued.

Each of the three judges was supposed to take an oath of impartiality, he said, but that oath had not been administered “as a sign of goodwill” as expressed in a notice issued by the Department of Information. 

Criticism of Said Pullicino

Brincat also singled out Chief Justice Emeritus Joseph Said Pullicino, who was one of the inquiry members. 

Said Pullicino had presented a report concerning the Caruana Galizia case to the Speaker in in Parliament in 2019, in his capacity as consultant to the Ombudsman.

Brincat said the findings of that report appear to be strongly prevalent in the conclusions of the public inquiry, including the reference to "an air of impunity" and other theories "based on suppositions rather than facts". 

There were “irrefutable indications” that Said Pullicino had already pronounced himself on the same merits, claimed the lawyer, questioning how the former judge could have possibly possessed the impartiality expected of him. 

In light of such considerations, the protesting party called upon the State Advocate to kickstart an inquiry without delay to determine whether all was done correctly in the Caruana Galizia public inquiry.