Media

Sons of slain Panama Papers reporter call for PM to resign

The sons of a prominent Maltese journalist have called on the island nation’s prime minister to step down — days after their mother was killed by a car bomb after leading the Panama Papers probe into corruption.

In a Facebook post Thursday, Matthew, Andrew and Paul Caruana Galizia said Prime Minister Joseph Muscat should take political responsibility for “failing to uphold our fundamental freedoms.”

Muscat, who has ruled out quitting, vowed to bring those responsible for killing a reporter he has described as his “greatest adversary” to justice — with the help of the FBI.

He told parliament Wednesday that the government would put up a “substantial and unprecedented reward” — about $1.2 million — for information leading to a conviction in the case.

But the sons said they were not endorsing the reward.

“We are not interested in justice without change,” they said. “We are not interested in a criminal conviction, only for the people in government who stood to gain from our mother’s murder to turn around and say that justice has been served.”

“The prime minister asked for our endorsement. This is how he can get it: show political responsibility and resign,” they added.

Caruana Galizia, 53, had just driven away from her home in Mosta, near the capital, Valletta, on Monday, when a bomb obliterated her Peugeot 108 and sent her body flying over a wall and into a field.

She had used her widely read blog Running Commentary to highlight cases of suspected corruption, including several scandals implicating Muscat’s inner circle, which had left her facing several lawsuits.

AP

Her sons said Muscat should resign because he had worked to “cripple our mother financially and dehumanize her so brutally and effectively that she no longer felt safe walking down the street,” Agence France-Presse reported.

“And before resigning he can make his last act in government the replacement of the Police Commissioner and Attorney General with public servants who won’t be afraid to act on evidence against him and those he protects.”

Muscat called and won an early election in June after Caruana Galizia said she had evidence that his wife, Michelle, was the beneficiary of a secret Panama bank account.

Caruana Galizia alleged the account was used to stash kickbacks from Azerbaijan’s ruling family linked to an Azeri bank gaining a license to operate in Malta.

Meanwhile, Matthew, Andrew and Paul remembered their mother and described previous death threats.

“I was sitting at the table there,” Matthew, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, told the Guardian of the UK. “I heard the explosion; the windows rattled, the whole house vibrated. I knew she was dead before I got up from my chair.”

Andrew recalled that in 1996, someone had set the front door on fire.

“Around about that time, too, someone killed the dog — cut its throat and laid it across the doorstep,” Andrew, who works in the Maltese diplomatic service, told the paper.

“A few years later, the neighbor’s car burned out; his house has almost exactly the same name as ours,” he said.

In 2006, Paul was coming home about 2 a.m. when he saw “a huge blaze, right beside the house. They’d dumped two big stacks of car tires, filled them with petrol, and set light to it.”

He reached the house just in time to stop the blaze from engulfing the building and to wake his sleeping parents.

“That was the first really serious attempt to physically harm her,” said Paul, now a fellow at the London School of Economics. “The clear intention was to burn the house down, with her inside it.”

Death threats became almost a daily occurrence, they said.

“We grew up with them. Phone calls, letters, notes pinned to the door. Then when mobile phones arrived, text messages. And later of course, emails, comments on her blog. Not to mention the lawsuits. So many lawsuits,” Matthew told the Guardian.

Despite the ordeals, their mom gave them a “normal childhood,” Matthew added.

“We were her priority, always,” he said. “But she remained capable of outrage. That’s the thing. She never, ever became cynical. Despite all she knew about everything that’s rotten in this country, she never became cynical.”

He said it was “almost irrelevant” for the killer — or killers — to be found.

“So many people wanted her dead, so many benefit,” he said. “People say, ‘I hope they find the bastards.’ But we know where the bastards are. They are in government. They’re on the TV. And they all, in part, bear responsibility.”

With Post wires