In Malta, a new proceeding may be opened in the murder case of the journalist. According to the media, prosecutors want to challenge the conduct of the jury trial, not the evidence

According to local media, the Maltese prosecution is preparing to challenge the acquittal of businessman Yorgen Fenech and seek a new trial in the murder case of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. It can challenge only the conduct of the proceedings, not the way the jury assessed the evidence — and according to sources close to the Office of the Attorney General, the main issue is to what extent the jury was allowed to hear about Fenech's requests for a presidential pardon. In the same week, another question arose about how the jury was selected: according to media reports, Fenech's uncle allegedly commissioned a phone survey months before the trial that also asked about a pardon in this case. Newsbook ↗ MaltaToday ↗

An appeal that could not challenge the verdict itself

A nine-member jury acquitted Fenech on Wednesday, 2 September, by an 8:1 vote on both counts in the indictment. Punishments were handed down for the murder itself: three men who planted and detonated the bomb were convicted, as were two others who procured and supplied it. Middleman Melvin Theuma was not convicted. In 2019 he received a presidential pardon in exchange for testimony. One link in the chain is therefore still missing: a legally convicted mastermind who ordered the killing. Under the law, prosecutors have fifteen working days to challenge the verdict, and according to sources cited by Newsbook and MaltaToday, they plan to do so. According to them, the Attorney General's office is currently studying what grounds the appeal can rely on. Newsbook ↗ Malta Independent ↗

What matters is what the prosecution may not challenge. It cannot argue that the jury misread the evidence or reached the wrong conclusion. It must identify a serious legal or procedural error that could have directly affected the outcome. The Court of Criminal Appeal may uphold an appeal if it finds a "serious irregularity" in the proceedings, or if the verdict resulted from a clearly incorrect interpretation or application of the law. But the same rule also allows the court to dismiss the appeal even if it agrees with the prosecution's legal argument, provided it concludes that no miscarriage of justice actually occurred. Newsbook ↗

So even a successful appeal would not automatically turn the acquittal into a conviction. Fenech would face a new proceeding before the Criminal Court, in other words a full trial from the beginning. Until then, he remains innocent in the eyes of the law. MaltaToday ↗

The specific grounds for the appeal have not been made public. According to sources cited by Newsbook, it is to focus on Judge Edwina Grima's decisions about the extent to which the jury was allowed to hear about Fenech's three requests for a presidential pardon in exchange for information about what he knew about the murder. In this case, the presidential pardon had been granted to middleman Melvin Theuma, and his testimony formed part of the prosecution's case. Newsbook ↗

The murdered journalist's older son Matthew Caruana Galizia welcomed the attempt to obtain a new trial. He called the verdict "disgusting" and wrote that it cannot erase the complicity in the murder, which, in his view, Fenech has repeatedly admitted himself. MaltaToday ↗

Also read: The Maltese jury acquitted a businessman charged with murdering a journalist. The Slovak Supreme Court overturned a similar verdict in the Kuciak case

A survey that asked the same thing

While prosecutors are weighing whether the jury was given everything it should have been, another question has emerged: what happened before the jurors were selected. During the trial, Judge Grima summoned pollster Vincent Marmarà over a phone survey on Fenech and the journalist's murder, carried out several weeks before proceedings began. Lovin Malta ↗

The survey reached five hundred people and asked them, among other things, whether they believed Fenech had ordered the murder, whether the mastermind had been caught at all, and what they thought about the presidential pardon granted to Theuma. According to Lovin Malta, the survey was commissioned by Ray Fenech, Yorgen Fenech's uncle, and the questions were cleared by one of the defense lawyers. The problem is the timing: by then, the list of potential jurors had already been published. Lovin Malta ↗

Lawyer Jason Azzopardi, who represented the murdered woman's family in the trial, says he was the one who alerted the court. According to his account, on 4 June a man called him after someone had phoned and asked about the court, Fenech, Theuma, Daphne Caruana Galizia, and also whom he had voted for. Azzopardi asked the next day to testify before the judge under oath and refused to reveal the caller's identity because he had promised not to. According to him, the judge ordered an immediate investigation. Newsbook ↗

What follows should be read as Azzopardi's claim, not as a finding of the court. The lawyer publicly called on others who had been contacted to come forward, and about fifty did. According to him, most of their names were on the 2026 jury list published in the government gazette in November 2025. In his view, the investigation led from an initial suspicion of another company to Vincent Marmarà's firm, and Marmarà was expected to testify that Ray Fenech commissioned the survey in March 2026 and that the questions were provided to him by two defense lawyers. Newsbook ↗

Marmarà rejects this. He told Newsbook that the survey was national and conducted scientifically, using randomly generated numbers, and that it had nothing to do with the jurors. He stressed that he had never been arrested, that he had provided the authorities and the court with everything they asked for, and that he defended the research as a legitimate way to measure how the public perceives court proceedings. The defense says the survey was meant to assess whether its client had been exposed to biased publicity before the trial, and denies any intent to influence jurors. Newsbook ↗ Lovin Malta ↗

What happened in court is more important than the accusations themselves. According to Lovin Malta, the judge reprimanded the defense for the timing of the survey and for failing to report it, but found no reason for criminal proceedings. The court ordered the calls to stop about three weeks before the trial began. Matthew Caruana Galizia said the family knew about the calls, but the court barred them from speaking about them until the trial was over. The June survey was the third in the series. The previous ones were conducted in 2021 and 2023. Lovin Malta ↗ Newsbook ↗

Marmarà is not a fringe figure in Malta. The outlet The Shift News, which describes him as a pollster close to Labour, wrote this week that he received another direct government contract without a tender — a separate issue with no demonstrated connection to the survey for the Feneches. The Shift News ↗

Who should go, and where the opposition says the murder was planned

The political layer has been reduced by the verdict to one question: who is responsible for it. On Saturday, the opposition Nationalist Party put that question to Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg. MP Mark Anthony Sammut said at a press conference that "The Attorney General needs to go today", and accused her of incompetence and corruption. He also criticised the fact that, during the trial and the delivery of the verdict, she was abroad, which he called irresponsible. Lovin Malta ↗

Sammut also called on the prime minister to take action against people linked to the governing party who, after the verdict, attacked the murdered woman's family on social media. His party colleague Michael Piccinino repeated the demand that the government implement the recommendations of the 2021 public inquiry into the murder, specifically laws on unexplained wealth and on obstructing justice. Lovin Malta ↗

The Labour Party rejected the call as an attack on institutions. In a statement it said the situation after the verdict calls for "seriousness and prudence", not insults, and urged opposition leader Alex Borg to distance himself from the statements of his MPs. According to Labour, the verdict should not be exploited for "political convenience". Lovin Malta ↗

The day before, parliament had convened in the middle of the summer recess because of the verdict. At the urgent debate requested by Borg, each party was given seventy-five minutes. At the centre of the dispute was a statement Borg made on the night after the verdict, outside Castille, the prime minister's office: he pointed to the building and said that the murder had been planned there. Prime Minister Robert Abela challenged him to back that up and asked him directly whether he had taken it to the police commissioner or to the investigating judge. He said Borg had adopted Fenech's defense arguments. Lovin Malta ↗ Newsbook ↗

Abela himself refused to comment on the verdict, citing the fact that further proceedings are still underway. Beyond the possible appeal, there is Judge Grima's order to hand the trial testimony over to the police commissioner, as well as two investigations led by examining magistrates. Interior Minister Glenn Bedingfield told parliament that the jury is responsible for the decision and that it is wrong to link it to the way the investigation or prosecution was conducted. He expressed "absolute confidence" in every police officer and accused the opposition of trying to damage the institution. At the same time, his own background shows how narrow the circle in Malta is: before becoming minister, he worked in Joseph Muscat's office alongside Keith Schembri and ran a blog that was largely devoted to attacks on Caruana Galizia. The public inquiry into the murder condemned that blog in its report. Newsbook ↗ The Shift News ↗

Borg framed the matter differently at the annual state-of-the-nation conference. According to him, the verdict shows the condition of a state in which political power and private interests are dangerously intertwined. He reminded listeners that the 2021 public inquiry attributed to the state responsibility for creating an environment of impunity that made the murder possible. "The problem begins when government tries to become everything – when institutions and the police are treated as an extension of the party in power. At that point, they stop guarding power and start protecting it," he said. At the same event, Abela replied that he had given the institutions resources and reforms, including a change in the way the police commissioner and judges are appointed. Newsbook ↗

Limits of this picture

Most of the details about the survey come from Jason Azzopardi, the lawyer who represented the side opposing the defendant in the trial. His statement about how many of those contacted were on the jury list is not a finding of the court or the police. Marmarà denies any connection to the jurors, and the court did not open criminal proceedings on the matter. It is also true that the published jury list in Malta is a public document and does not in itself prove that the survey was aimed at jurors.

The appeal itself is also still only a claim by sources, not an official announcement. Newsbook and MaltaToday rely on unnamed sources close to the prosecution, while Malta Independent already writes as if the decision has been made. The Attorney General's office has not commented publicly, and the fifteen-working-day deadline is still running. Until the appeal is filed and the Court of Criminal Appeal rules on it, Yorgen Fenech remains acquitted of the murder and enjoys the presumption of innocence. He still faces the corruption charge linked to the Electrogas project, and he denies that as well.

The same applies to the political layer. The claim that the murder was planned at the prime minister's office, and the accusations against the attorney general, are positions taken by opposition politicians, not findings of any judicial or disciplinary process.

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Illustrative photo: the Court of Justice building on Republic Street in Valletta. Author Txllxt TxllxT, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.