Reporters Continue To Track Down Killers Of Their Own

Michael Hedges June 29, 2019 - Follow on Twitter

Investigations are meant to bring sunlight to wrongdoing. Jail-time can result from judicial investigations reinforced by trials. Journalistic investigations put wrongdoing under the klieg of public pressure. It is no surprise that those engaged in egregious behavior fear investigative reporters more than their courts.

The Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) issued findings earlier this month related to the 2017 murder of Malta investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The report by Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt called for Malta’s government to establish an independent public inquiry. “This murder and the continuing failure of the Maltese authorities to bring the suspected killers to trial or identify those who ordered the assassination raise serious questions about the rule of law in Malta,” said the published summary (June 8).

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, named in the PACE report, has little interest in a public inquiry, citing “totally false and misleading” assertions, reported the Malta Independent (June 27). “I definitely will not be the person to shoulder responsibility if a public inquiry and its process ends up destroying the current case against the three arrested persons,” suggesting those charges could be dropped. That may happen anyway when the criminal cases reach the two-year statute of limitations. Malta authorities have not identified who may have paid for the car-bomb hit on Daphne Caruana Galizia, nor do they seem inclined to do so.

Investigations into Ms Caruana Galizia’s murder have continued to raise interesting questions. Family members provided Latvia’s Financial Intelligence Unit information about persons who she had “investigated and we believe are connected to her subsequent murder,” reported Bloomberg (June 11). Those would be “a network of money launderers” who used Malta’s Pilatus Bank, infamous from the Panama Papers, and Latvia’s ABLV Bank. “The Iranian-owned bank in Malta was possibly part of a larger money laundering network for Azerbaijani and Maltese government officials and their associates and family members,” said the submitted Suspicious Transactions Report.

The PACE report was accepted 72 to 18 with three abstentions. There is a thread running through those voting against the report. Representatives of States and political parties averse to press freedom and criticism on corruption seem not at all interested in further investigations. Those voting against include representatives from Azerbaijan, Italy, Hungary, Cyprus and Turkey. PACE is comprised of MPs from the 47 members of the Council of Europe, which oversees the European Court of Human Rights. After the initial vote several amendments were proposed to step back from confronting the Malta government, citing “one-sided news reports.” None passed.

“Over and above everything such an inquiry needs to cover how the murder could have been prevented and, to our minds, that murder could have been prevented if the stories the journalist had published had actually been investigated by the authorities as they should have been,” wrote the Malta Independent (June 28) in a equally scathing editorial. “From a journalistic standpoint, and, more importantly, from the standpoint of the national interest, it needs to be established why, exactly, those scoops, particularly those that implicated people in the highest echelons of power, were never investigated. It needs to be determined why, when reports of misconduct of those at, and close to, the epicentre of power were drawn up that they were left to gather dust on successive police commissioners' desks.”

Investigative reporters fully recognize that results of their work are often ignored and scorned. With no conclusive judicial review of alleged wrongdoing, the public loses interest as another scandal seizes the headlines. It has been the same, historically, with reporters violated, attacked or murdered for pursuing an inquiry. It is a culture of impunity.

That is shifting. After Slovak investigative reporter Jan Kuciak and his fiancé were murdered in February 2018 several media outlets resolved to bring justice to bear. It was relentless and the result was a dramatic public outcry, which led to resignations of several officials and, inevitably, a change in government.

The gristly murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian Istanbul consulate in October 2018, despite unwavering efforts from the complicit and duplicitous, has not faded from the public view. The UN Human Rights Council this past week (June 27) suggested an official cover-up. Every new lurid detail is widely reported.

Reporting on the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, after nearly two years, shows no signs of hesitation. But these are only three murdered media workers. The Committee to Protect Journalists database of murdered journalists shows an average of more than one killed each week in 2018. The vast majority are already forgotten.

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