International media groups welcome upheld Maksar verdicts in Daphne murder case
Organisations hail decision as key step against impunity
A group of international media freedom and journalist organisations have welcomed the confirmation of guilty verdicts handed to the Maksar crime gang for their role in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
On Wednesday, Robert Agius and Jamie Vella lost an appeal against lifetime prison sentences handed to them last year, after a jury found them guilty of being involved in two separate murders.
In June 2025, Agius and Vella, together with Adrian Agius and George Degorgio, were condemned to spend the rest of their lives behind bars afrter a jury convicted them of charges related to the killings of lawyer Carmel Chircop in 2015 and Caruana Galizia two years later.
In a statement signed by the International Press Institute, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, the organisations said the confirmation of the sentences "solidified an important step forward for justice and represented another important victory in the fight against impunity".
“Our organisations continue to closely monitor the legal process and reaffirm our continued support for Daphne’s family and their legal team in the ongoing fight for full and uncompromising justice,” they said.
“We hope that all those involved in the killing will soon be behind bars and some of our organisations intend to be in Valletta to hear the announcement of the verdict. Nothing but full justice for Daphne’s brutal murder will suffice.”
In their appeal, the defendants argued that their defence was prejudiced from the outset due to intense media coverage concerning the cases and further vitiated when a reserve juror was caught with a tablet that they used to browse news sites and ChatGPT.
They also raised objections about jurors being shown a 2021 police press conference, despite that press conference having been declared inadmissible as evidence by the superior courts.
In a judgment over 200 pages long, the court of appeal rejected all those grounds of appeal.
High-profile cases in democracies inevitably drew extensive media coverage, the court said, and jurors had been given clear and repeated instructions to base their decisions solely on evidence heard in the courtroom.
The juror caught with a tablet was immediately disqualified, and a court expert confirmed that no case-specific discussions occurred. Defendants had also agreed to proceed with the trial at the time, the court noted: they could not now claim the incident prejudiced the entire trial.
The court also noted that the press conference shown in court was struck off from the record and jurors were given specific instructions to disregard it entirely.