Do you remember the start of the Libyan Civil War in 2011? The one that toppled Gaddafi? I was glued to the news – watching the revolt unfold live. I remember the first TV journalist to reach Green Square with the rebels. She was sending her reports to Sky News from the rooftop of a van, talking to the camera while holding the satellite phone with one hand and the boom mike with the other.
She had no protection apart from a helmet and a bulletproof vest and was surrounded by men who were all the time shooting – when not in fighting, in celebration. That woman, brave and courageous, who gave us live, onsite reporting of the Battle of Tripoli was Alex Crawford.
She is one of the journalists I follow avidly – a mother of four children, extremely passionate about her profession, who stops at nothing to unearth the truth. Only this April, on assignment in a Syrian village where she was reporting the plight of the war-torn villagers, she and her media team came under fire from the Syrian government army and were repeatedly shot at with shells fired from a battle tank.
She’s in Turkey at the moment, trailing that Syrian Erdogan as he makes deals with the US to quash the Kurds. But wherever she is in the world, she has never stopped following the Daphne Caruana Galizia story. Last Wednesday, during the protest to mark the two years since the assassination of the Maltese journalist, Crawford sent in a video recording, addressing the Maltese government. I believe the clip is doing the rounds on social media – please watch it – it’s shows Crawford battle weary, but determined, at her no-nonsense best.
“I would just like to ask the Maltese government to please, please, stop trying to fool everyone. This inquiry does not seem independent at all or impartial. If you were really serious about trying to find out what happened to Daphne, you’d be doing a whole lot more. There’s very few conclusions that we can draw other than you don’t want an inquiry and you don’t the truth to come out.”
Has Joseph Muscat seen this clip? Did he frown much? Does he realise that at summits when he bumps into heads of State, they’re just thinking, “Ah, here comes the one who does not want the truth to come out”. Does he realise that this means everyone knows he has vested interest for the truth to stay hidden? Or maybe he did not watch it at all and pooh-poohed Crawford as a blinded-by-traitors woman?
On the same day of Crawford’s deadly clip, the American embassy released a very poignant statement. “The US,” it said, was “ready to support the Maltese investigation if requested by Maltese authorities”.
I had to re-read that over and over. If? If requested? What is the meaning of that ‘if’? I thought FBI were already helping. I thought Maltese authorities were “leaving no stone unturned”. What’s going on?
Who on earth is working on this case then? We must have collectively misheard that notorious soundbite of Joseph Muscat. What he must have said was, ‘Leave all stones unturned please’
We know for a fact that FBI agents assisted local police investigators within hours of the assassination in October 2017. They traced the mobile phones involved in the crime and were crucial in identifying and arresting the three men who stand accused of executing the car bombing. The FBI helped to get to the killers, and then, when the next obvious step was for them to help trace the mastermind who commissioned the killing, the government quickly patted their shoulders and rushed them back to the airport. “Yup. You’ve done enough. We’ll take over from here. Goodbye now.”
The US statement makes it very clear that the FBI is no longer involved in the investigations and it actually went on to plead with the Maltese government to act properly. “It is not too late for Malta to bring Daphne’s killer to justice in a credible manner,” the statement reads.
Note how loaded the words are for a diplomatic statement – “not too late,” “killer,” “credible” they say. The reply? Oh, it came speedily. The Maltese government sent out a PR saying it has “full faith” in investigators working on the case which “involved international organisations such as FBI and Europol at various stages”.
Err, hello? The US just told us that the FBI are out of it, and Europol have ages ago expressed their disappointment at the lack of cooperation of Maltese authorities. So, the government is blatantly lying.
Who on earth is working on this case then? We must have collectively misheard that notorious soundbite of Muscat. What he must have said was “Leave all stones unturned please”.
Really, we should all be out on the streets protesting, at the very least because the Prime Minister thinks it’s fine to fool us all the time.
There is no denying that what makes the situation hopeless and helpless is the fact that there is no Opposition. Correction. There is one, but it lives in a La La Land bubble.
On Wednesday, the leader of the Opposition mistook the protest memorial in Valletta for the grave of Caruana Galizia. He went with a bunch of men in ties and cameras in tow, “to pay their respects to Daphne”. He clearly does not realise that flowers and candles are placed at the foot of the Great Siege monument as a sign of protest against injustice and corruption which the journalist unveiled.
He does not realise that the protest is against him too because a) he is not doing his job, which is that of opposing and b) because he’s got too much dodgy baggage to be able to do that job properly. If no one around him – Louis Galea please note – is telling him what’s going on outside the bubble, then they all really ought to find another hobby other than hogging crucial democratic roles.
A friend of mine the other day told me: “At this point, if I still had hair, I might have joined Graffiti”, in reference to his disillusionment of the political class across the board. “Since I no longer have hair, I am slowly becoming a hermit in my own house.” I know the feeling.
At the end of the day, we just want politicians to represent our best interests. We want deeds not words, to quote the great Pankhurst. We want politicians to make us feel secure and we want to know that we are paying them out of our taxes safe in the knowledge that they are taking care of our common good. None of them are doing this, and until that happens, we must resiliently keep up the pressure.
In the words of Crawford last Wednesday: “Please, please, can we try and find out exactly what happened to Daphne Caruana Galizia – she is not just a journalist, she’s a mother and a Maltese citizen. And everyone needs to know what happened to her.”
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti