Council of Europe rapporteur Pieter Omtzigt has dismissed complaints by Yorgen Fenech's legal team that he had wilfully ignored their fair trial concerns.
In a letter to London lawyer Wayne Jordash, acting on behalf of the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder suspect, Omtzigt warned the lawyer he was "labouring under a fundamental misunderstanding of my function as an international oversight mechanism".
The Dutch MP repeatedly stressed that he was not in a position to present any complaints to domestic authorities and said it was "surprising" that Fenech expected him to raise the matter himself before he had instructed his own lawyers to do so.
"My role is to supervise Malta's fulfilment of its international obligations. My concerns relate to the existence, regulation and proper application of the state apparatus that is required to fulfil those obligations. I am not a judge in anyone's case, nor anyone's advocate or legal advisor," he wrote.
Jordash was commissioned by Fenech to petition Omtzigt on fair trial rights, complaining of an “inflammatory and prejudicial press campaign” that could undermine Fenech’s right to a fair trial.
Jordash requested Omtzigt's intervention on three occasions since May but the Dutch MP responded only in late November, stating that any intervention on his part would be inappropriate as the matter was still sub judice.
A large part of the complaint centres on an interview given by MP Jason Azzopardi, a lawyer for the Caruana Galizia family, which Fenech's legal team has argued was prejudical to his fair trial rights.
However, Omtzigt said that as the matter had been dealt with promptly by the domestic court, there had been no "manifest failure of the state apparatus in this respect, and so there was no reason for me to intervene".
The Dutch MP also rejected a claim that he was acting in support of the prosecution, noting that he had often criticised the investigation and prosecution of the murder case and had "scrupulously avoided commenting on either the prosecution of the defendants' cases."
He rejected the accusation that he had thrown "oil on the flames" by publishing his correspondence with Jordash, noting that there had been no request for secrecy and that his role required a presumption of transparency.
"It is regrettable that I have been forced to continue our correspondence in public but your aggressively public outburst makes it necessary for me to clarify my position in an open letter," he said.
"Finally, I hope you can agree that I do not need to take lessons on how to fulfil my independent and impartial mandate from the paid representative of someone with a personal interest in these matters."