
Malta car bomb kills Panama Papers journalist - fmihaila
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist
======
theyregreat
That makes at least 28 journalists murdered this year _that we know about._
Others are likely disappeared or not popular enough to get news items.

[https://cpj.org/killed/2017/](https://cpj.org/killed/2017/)

EDIT: I already sent CPJ an anonymous message mentioning the list sadly needs
updating as it’s currently at 27. :’(

------
icebraining
As a sidenote, her son is a developer, and part of the ICJ project for safely
transferring and processing the Panama Papers data:
[https://lovinmalta.com/feature/maltese-data-journalist-
works...](https://lovinmalta.com/feature/maltese-data-journalist-works-on-
panama-papers)

------
techdragon
I'm not exactly a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but this looks like some
suspicious shit to me. I can only hope it's investigated to a suitably sound
set of conclusions, anything less will merely deepen the cries of modern
conspiracy types.

~~~
Numberwang
I'm on Malta at the moment, (I'm not Maltese). From what I've heard this will
mostly be related to local politics in Malta rather than some international
coverup.

~~~
tryingagainbro
If she released those papers, she ruined a lot of people. Yeah, she was doing
her job as a journo but the guy who will lose $500 mil to taxes /fines and go
to jail for 20 years doesn't care much about semantics.

Princes, Prime Ministers, royal families, mafia bosses, banking execs, spies,
ministers...you name it, Panama papers had them. It doesn't take much to kill
an average person, they know who to call.

~~~
neaden
She didn't release the Panama Papers, that was an anonymous source to the
German reporter Bastian Obermayer. She read the papers and connected them to
some local figures in Malta, so presumably whoever murdered her was Maltese or
had some business dealings there.

Edit: I think it's important to keep in mind too that Malta has an organized
crime presence. In fact it looks like there were three car bombings in Malta
last year.
[http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/71110/explosion_h...](http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/71110/explosion_hits_st_pauls_bay#.WeUfMFtSxaQ)

------
lawnchair_larry
Headline is a little misleading. She had nothing to do with the release of the
Panama Papers. She read them once they were posted online, looking to see if
there were people of interest to her community, and blogging about that.

~~~
danso
She's a journalist whose reporting on the Panama Papers led to significant
impact in Malta:

[http://www.politico.eu/list/politico-28-class-
of-2017-rankin...](http://www.politico.eu/list/politico-28-class-
of-2017-ranking/daphne-caruana-galizia/)

> The best way to think of Daphne Caruana Galizia is as a one-woman WikiLeaks,
> crusading against untransparency and corruption in Malta, an island nation
> famous for both...“She single-handedly brought the government to the verge
> of collapse,” says one MP.*

If it were straightforward to report on Malta in the Panama Papers, the
original investigation would have targeted Malta's government. A lot of
important journalism is examining released material and connecting the dots
within a context.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Sure, I was not saying anything one way or another about her impact. The
headline just made it sound like it was the person who broke the Panama Papers
story. Or maybe it was just me who read it that way.

------
Xoros
And I thought movies exaggerated. I hate it when reality overcomes fiction.

------
PhantomGremlin
One interesting statement from the article: _Muscat announced later in
parliament that FBI officers were on their way to Malta to assist with the
investigation, following his request for outside help from the US government._

It's interesting that the prime minister of Malta has asked the US FBI for
help. The EU is a "federation" of sorts and could (perhaps already does?) have
their own EU-wide equivalent of our USA-wide FBI?

The FBI is quite often useful in US cases like this. It can act as an
independent agency that can and does investigate local corruption. But it
seems inappropriate to have them investigate a murder in Malta? Isn't there a
lot of "local knowledge" that the FBI wouldn't have?

There are other nuances involved in the USA. Local murders aren't, without
other circumstances, "federal" crimes. So the FBI doesn't generally get
involved. But there are other laws available here for situations like this.
E.g. it is a US federal offense to violate someone's "civil rights".

~~~
tryingagainbro
They can also decline to fully cooperate with the FBI later on, if it gets too
close. Right now it's great: who doesn't trust the FBI...we have nothing to
hide, call them in to find the truth. In reality, unless local police guide
and allow them, they can do jack.

------
gejjaxxita
Maltese person here who has been following this journalist for a long time.
The international reporting of this omits a lot of important information. It
is far from certain that her assassination had a political motive. While I
admired her for uncovering cases of corruption, she also had a very nasty
streak, resorting to things like publishing revenge porn [1][2] and mocking
women for the way the dressed [3]. A revenge motive completely unconnected to
politics cannot be excluded.

I don't deny that the circumstances of the assassination are suspicious, and I
also think a political motive is possible, but people are jumping to
conclusions without waiting for evidence.

[1]([https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/08/oh-look-whos-
here-m...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/08/oh-look-whos-here-mr-
starkers-appointment-to-the-chair-of-the-pharmacy-council-is-announced-in-the-
government-gazette-today/))

[2]([https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the-
barre...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the-barrel-the-
labour-mayor-of-hal-qormi/))

[3]([https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2016/09/hot-new-style-
wroug...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2016/09/hot-new-style-wrought-iron-
patterns/))

------
jaggederest
Darkly humorous that it's hard to figure out whether her car was trapped, or
whether someone used a separate vehicular bomb and caught her in the blast
radius.

The idea that this is a thing that the general public might routinely have to
distinguish is pretty sad.

------
throwaway_malta
You can make up your mind of what kind of person she was by reading her blog:

[https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/)

She was hated by many, both because she was very biased (think more Breitbart
than Fox News) and also because she had no reservations about punching below
the belt. It is hard to write this without sounding biased, but I never
thought of her as a good person nor as a good journalist.

The perpetrator could be anyone, but personally I do not think it was
politically motivated since she supported a faction of the opposition that is
currently, completely in shambles and she was therefore no threat to anyone.
Moreover, most of the Maltese population did not respect her as a journalist
because of her overt bias. All the people jumping to conclusions are just
doing a disservice to her by possibly misleading the investigations.

There is also no reason to believe that she was killed by some "international
bankers" or some such conspiracy theories. Her "investigative journalism" was
limited to attacking the PL, one of our two main political parties. She never
really ventured past that.

I will not speculate further.

~~~
cgmg
> Her car, a Peugeot 108, was destroyed by a powerful explosive device which
> blew the vehicle into several pieces and threw the debris into a nearby
> field.

> A blogger whose posts often attracted more readers than the combined
> circulation of the country’s newspapers, Caruana Galizia was recently
> described by the Politico website as a “one-woman WikiLeaks”. Her blogs were
> a thorn in the side of both the establishment and underworld figures that
> hold sway in Europe’s smallest member state.

The article contradicts pretty much everything you just said.

~~~
throwawaymalta
Her blog was popular. I read it too. Not because I agreed with her. Go read
the blog, yourself to see what kind of person she was.

Most people hated her because she was mean and her pastime, when not
professionally attacking politicians on the other side of the aisle, was to
dig up dirt on their spouses and acquaintances and attacking them on a
personal level. [5]

For example of the kind of shit that she would engage in: Here she is
reposting revenge porn. The victim is an acquaintance of some random major of
some random town that leans towards the other political party. The major did
nothing wrong nor was she politically relevant in anyway. This was her bread
and butter "journalism". [1]

With regards to the car bomb, I'm not sure what you are saying here. I am not
denying that she was murdered using a car bomb. Are you saying that this
implies a high level actor? Far from it. Low level thugs and organized crime
members kill each other with car bomb frequently. [2] [3] [4]

One last thing. With regards to the whole Panama thing, that was potentially
her only work that could be see as real journalism. But also that situation is
being misrepresented. The entire picture is more complicated. The thing is
that she was part of a faction of the opposition who had previously been in
power for 25 years and where themselves corrupt. So much so that despite the
whole Panama scandal thing, the recent election saw the newly in power PL
government widen the gap by a very huge margin of 40000 votes out of a few
hundred thousand. Basically the statement by the electorate was, "we do not
care that the PL are corrupt, you guys were equally corrupt and for much
longer, at least the PL as improving things elsewhere". This resulted in the
her party basically disintegrating and is currently fragmented and
disorganized. This is why I said that a political motive does not make sense.
Because there is no reason for it. The electorate wants the PL to lead the
country for a few more years despite the corruption because they are so fed up
with the PN.

[1] NSFW Link: [https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the-
barre...](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the-barrel-the-
labour-mayor-of-hal-qormi/)

[2]
[https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20160116/local/ma...](https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20160116/local/man-
killed-as-car-goes-up-in-flames-in-marsascala.598955)

[3]
[https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121003/local/Po...](https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121003/local/Police-
hunting-three-men-over-car-bomb.439376)

[4]
[https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130607/world/bo...](https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130607/world/bomb-
explodes-under-car-of-prison-director.472930)

[5] There were reports of people celebrating her death at the university and
elsewhere. That's how much they hated her.

