Politicians in high office should refrain from making public statements on the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder as these might lead to the suspects’ acquittal during a trial, former European Court of Human Rights judge Giovanni Bonello has warned.
“While public comments on ongoing matters of public interest (like a high-profile assassination of an opposition journalist) are permissible, the same cannot be said of comments by politicians in higher office,” he said.
“These comments may contaminate the fairness of a subsequent criminal trial.”
He said he did not believe that high officials who are commenting publicly were doing so deliberately to make it easy for the defence to annul the subsequent criminal trials, as some were claiming.
“But that public statements may result in the acquittal of the accused is a real risk that cannot be discounted.”
These comments may contaminate the fairness of a subsequent criminal trial
The former human rights judge sounded the warning when The Sunday Times of Malta asked if he subscribed to the view that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat should distance himself from the ongoing investigations due to a potential conflict of interest.
Such concerns have risen in the wake of indications that Ms Caruana Galizia was murdered in connection with her investigation into allegations of kickbacks involving the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri and Minister Konrad Mizzi. These bribes could, in turn, be connected to the lucrative contract awarded to Electrogas to build a new gas-fired power plant in Delimara.
According to an e-mail leaked last year by Times of Malta and Reuters, Electrogas shareholder Yorgen Fenech was planning to transfer €2 million from his secret Dubai-based company 17 Black to Mr Schembri’s and Dr Mizzi’s secret Panama companies, Tillgate and Hearnville respectively.
Dr Bonello cautioned that wearing two hats at the same time could give rise to conflicts and to blurring of boundaries.
“The investigative and prosecuting authorities of the State (the Attorney-General and the police) are, in modern functioning democracies, expected to act autonomously, independently from pressures or directives from the political executive,” he said.
Such a consideration also applied to the possibility of granting a presidential pardon to solve this case. “The same considerations – avoidance of exercising separate and sometimes contrasting functions – would apply to the granting of criminal immunity to a suspect,” he said.