Yorgen Fenech is claiming that his defence is being “irremediably prejudiced” by police refusal to disclose “all material” crucial to clearing his name.

Lawyers for the businessman currently awaiting trial for alleged complicity in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia filed a judicial protest against Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa on Monday.

It renewed calls for the evidence to be disclosed and is holding him responsible for allegedly breaching Fenech’s right to a fair hearing. 

Following his arrest in November 2019, during a 10-day span of interrogations, Fenech insisted that police had more recordings, other than the four made available to him at that stage.

He insisted that those recordings would corroborate his version and prove what he has claimed all along, namely that he never “wanted, sought, ordered or paid for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.”

Later events proved that Fenech was right, said his lawyers, making reference to “over 200 recordings” which police had at the time of Fenech’s interrogations.

Their request for full disclosure of material evidence “crucial” to Fenech’s defence, including phone intercepts and statements by third parties linked to the murder, was repeated “10 times” but the requested evidence never materialised.

In December 2020, the Magistrates’ Court stated that police were “bound” to make such evidence available to Fenech’s lawyers and to reveal any evidence that could favour the accused even if the prosecution itself did not intend to avail itself of such evidence.

It was now an “uncontested fact” that police had evidence that could "prove his innocence,” claimed his lawyers, pointing out a particular phone tap which indicated the businessman had been “framed”.

By ignoring and denying their repeated request for full disclosure, adopting stratagies to avoid such requests, police were “irremediably” prejudicing Fenech’s defence while the “true mastermind/s continued to evade justice”.

For this reason, his lawyers called upon the police commissioner to “immediately” make available a full list of all material gathered in the murder investigation and to grant Fenech’s defence access in terms of the law.

Although the right to disclosure has been on the law books for 19 years, police persisted in ignoring their duties, denying the accused evidence that was “crucial” to his defence.

Lawyers Gianluca Caruana Curran, Charles Mercieca and Marion Camilleri signed the judicial protest.