Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on Tuesday reacted to calls for Daphne Caruana Galizia investigators to look into his own actions, saying he never put himself above the law.

Dr Muscat was replying in a counter-protest to a protest filed on Monday by the Caruana Galizia family.

The family had called for Dr Muscat’s actions to be investigated and for evidence to be seized. They also called on the court to order Dr Muscat not to interfere in current investigations.

In his reply, Dr Muscat said he never expected, whether as prime minister or as an ordinary citizen, to be above the law.

The case, he said, is under the scrutiny of a magisterial inquiry whose purpose is to ensure that the investigation covers every relevant action and preserve any relevant evidence.

Dr Muscat said the recent developments in the investigation showed that the national institutions worked well, despite claims to the contrary.

He insisted that he never interfered and never intended to interfere in the investigations.

Dr Muscat said, however, that he was surprised how, after having reached agreement with the family on the composition of the board which will conduct an independent inquiry into the murder, he was still faced with claims that he could interfere in the collection of evidence by the inquiry board, by the investigation and in the criminal proceedings.

Referring to points made in the family’s protest about other arrests, Dr Muscat said he could not speak about how or why the arrests were made and what the outcomes were.

But those arrests in themselves confirmed the independence of the investigators. Indeed, rather than saying that the arrests were some messa in scena (a show) the family was going to the other extreme and insinuating that all those who had been interrogated were guilty.

Dr Muscat, therefore, denied that he was somehow undermining the continuation of the investigation and breaching the right to life as protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.