Updated 3.25pm with Muscat, Grima's comments

Joseph Muscat has dropped a libel case against a lawyer after he clarified that a social media comment he wrote in 2020 was not meant to accuse Muscat of being the person who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia or ordered her murder.

Muscat dropped the case on Monday, after Christian Grima told court that his remarks were not intended to mean that Muscat himself placed the bomb, detonated it or commissioned the assassination, essentially declaring in court that the former prime minister was neither the executioner nor the commissioner of the murder.

The libel suit had been triggered by comments made by the lawyer when reacting to a video clip by Muscat’s wife, Michelle, in which she spoke about “what happened to” the journalist.

Grima wrote in May 2020: “What happened to her? Your husband blew her up. That’s what happened to her.”

Muscat filed a defamation suit against Grima, his former schoolmate, saying it was “totally defamatory” because it implied that he killed or was involved in the assassination of the journalist.

She was murdered in a car bomb outside her Bidnija home in October 2017.

But on Monday Grima's lawyer explained that Grima did not mean that comment literally. What he meant was that Muscat's government had permitted the culture of impunity for the murder to take place.

This is essentially in line with the findings of the public inquiry and the resolutions of the European Parliament about the climate of violence and impunity leading to Caruana Galizia's murder.

Grima had already made a similar clarification in a hearing of the same case in 2022.

Muscat and Grima react

Contacted for comment on Tuesday, Muscat said Grima had, in fact, previously told court that he truly meant that the former prime minister was in some way involved in the assassination, leading the court to order Grima to prove his claim.

"Over the past few years, there have been attempts to have this statement retracted, but the declaration offered by Dr Grima was unsatisfactory because it made a judgment that I did not agree with," Muscat said.

"Yesterday in court, there was a development where Dr Grima made a statement saying that he never intended to imply that I was the executor or instigator of the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, and that he was making his own the conclusions of the public inquiry and resolutions of the European Parliament.

"For me, this means that he confirmed the fact that I was never involved in this case. Therefore, in light of this statement, I withdrew the libel suit."

He added that he made a similar offer "to the Caruana Galizia family in the libel suit concerning the Egrant lie".

"I said that I am willing to drop the libel suit if they recognise the conclusions of the inquiry that was conducted."

In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, Grima said Muscat had “a sudden change of heart” after Keith Schembri and former counter terrorism unit head George Cremona were summoned to testify on Monday.

That is when Muscat “accepted a declaration made three years ago in open court that he had created a culture of impunity and violence that led to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a declaration he flatly rejected, back then, only to accept it years later”.

Grima was represented by lawyer Carl Grech. Muscat was represented by lawyer Pawlu Lia.