One of the three alleged hitmen in the Caruana Galizia assassination has once again failed to be released on bail, with the court declaring that “nothing had changed” since its similar decision last month. 

Vincent Muscat was in court on Friday, first attending the compilation of evidence alongside the other two alleged murderers, brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, and subsequently to attend a separate hearing before the Criminal Court. 

As the latter hearing kicked off, shortly after 12.30pm, Muscat’s lawyer Marc Sant requested the court, presided over by Madam Justice Edwina Grima, to proceed with submissions behind closed doors. 

The lawyer also questioned why neither Inspector Keith Arnaud nor Inspector Kurt Zahra, prosecutors handling the murder case, were present.

The court replied  that since those officers had already testified and had not been summoned by the defence, there was no need for them to testify again, adding that the lawyer was not to use the bail proceedings to “find out the status of the investigation.”

The sitting then proceeded behind closed doors, owing to “the sensitive nature” of the matter.

Later in the afternoon, the Court delivered its decree turning down the request for bail, stating that “nothing had changed” since its decision just over a month ago. 

As it had declared in its previous decree, the court was concerned by the fact that this murder presented “wide ramifications”, with third parties arraigned more recently and the magisterial inquiry still ongoing. 

The “criminal network had still not been reined in” Madam Justice Grima had said in May, and those concerns still existed.

Bail could seriously prejudice the course of justice, the Court had added, standing firm by those same considerations and again denying Muscat bail.