Impunity for corruption poses greatest threat to journalists, Casa warns

MEP David Casa paid tribute to Daphne Caruana Galizia in a European Parliament debate on the occasion of the six year anniversary since her assassination.

But while praising the parliamentary work to improve the freedom of the press, he cautioned that the conditions that enabled Daphne’s assassination are still there.

“The risk is at its highest when there is no justice for the criminality that journalists expose,” Casa warned, blasting the blanket impunity that still exists for crimes committed by public officials.

This serves to exacerbate the threat to journalists in Malta. “This is why the scandals that Maltese journalists have uncovered are so worrying,” Casa explained, because “those in power continue to be protected to the detriment of the people."

“Six years after they killed her, there has not yet been a single conviction for all the corruption that Daphne exposed, let alone for all the corruption exposed since.”

He called on the Commission to bolster its efforts with “action commensurate to the gravity of the situation”.

“It had to be a car bomb that left three sons without their mother to bring into full focus the harsh reality of the state of impunity in Malta,” Casa stated, calling on the European institutions not to succumb to complacency over the state of the rule of law in Malta