Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1262267
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 21 JUNE 2020 OPINION Raphael Vassallo It was a trap... and Adrian Delia walked right into it WELL, it looks like one of my worst fears is about to be re- alized. In October last year, I wrote that Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder was shaping up to become "Malta's umpteenth unsolved crime"… because "there are just too many forces, too hard at work, to unwittingly see to it that it remains a mys- tery forever". And what do you know? The week's events have conspired to take that possibility one step closer to becoming a reality. For the process of discrediting State witness Melvin Theuma – on whose testimony everything hinges – has now begun in ear- nest; and it was started by (of all people) the leader of an Opposi- tion party that has been calling for 'justice for Daphne' since August 2017. OK, let's rewind a little. For the past few weeks, the Nationalist Party media has been trumpet- ing allegations, made by Melvin Theuma in court, to the ef- fect that Chris Cardona was all along the real mastermind be- hind Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder (note: for the rest of this article, I'm going to assume that you've been following the recent developments in court). So far, no hard evidence has been produced to substanti- ate that claim… which, in any case, consists of hearsay: for Theuma himself was mere- ly repeating what he was told by Yorgen Fenech; and even if most of Theuma's testimony can be backed up by recorded telephone conversations, it still boils down to 'what he was told by others'… which (as any law- yer can easily confirm) makes it entirely inadmissible as evi- dence in a murder trial. Naturally, this doesn't mean that Cardona is innocent; but it does mean that the legal case against him is very, very weak. Theuma's testimony, on its own, cannot even stand up in a court of law: still less be considered sufficient to convict a man on homicide charges. Nor has anyone, it seems, even considered the fact that Yorgen Fenech (being the main suspect) has a clear, self-evident motive in widening the net of suspicion as much as possible. The more people he successfully impli- cates in this case, the less his own culpability – and with it, the sentence he will receive – when (or if) it ever comes to a guilty verdict. And Fenech is not the only one who would benefit from an in- conclusive murder trial, either. It is now painfully apparent that Daphne's murder was linked to government corruption be- fore 2017… and there is already prima facie evidence that pub- lic officials (including Keith Schembri and former Police Commissioner Lawrence Cuta- jar, both of whom were named by Theuma as possible sources of 'leaks') may have obstructed the course of justice, once the investigation was under way. Meanwhile, it is obvious that the court case against Yorgen Fenech will only reveal more details of the Muscat admin- istration's shady dealings as it goes along – just on Friday, a Times/Reuters report suggest- ed a link with the Montenegro wind-farm deal, for instance – so it should be equally obvious that anyone involved in any of that corruption, at any level, will likewise have a vested interest in throwing a spanner into the works (as, indeed, some already have tried to do). But of course, none of that actually matters. The only im- portant consideration, so far, has always been that Theuma's testimony reflects popular sus- picion: and as long as his unsub- stantiated claims were limited to Chris Cardona – and there- fore, by extension, to the Labour Party (of which Cardona was deputy leader until earlier this week)… then as far as all the po- litical opponents of Labour were concerned, everything Theuma uttered in court was automat- ically going to be received as 'Gospel Truth'. Until, that is, the inevitable happened… and Theuma de- parted from the script, by mak- ing allegations about Opposi- tion leader Adrian Delia instead: this time, that Yorgen Fenech had attempted to bribe the PN (to the tune of either €50,000 or €250,000, depending whose ver- sion you believe) into engineer- ing an electoral defeat for David Casa in the MEP elections. And just like that – from one second to the next – 'unsubstan- tiated allegations' are no longer enough to confirm guilt (as they were until just a few days ago). Suddenly, the same people who have been calling for Chris Car- dona's head on a plate, on the basis of entirely unproven hear- say, came out guns blazing to demand 'proof' of allegations against themselves: made by the same witness, in the same case, as the ones against Cardona. I could almost stop right there, because already the sheer na- kedness of the hypocrisy is plainly visible for all to see. Un- fortunately, however, there is a lot more to this than mere hy- pocrisy by Maltese politicians (which, in any case, is not exact- ly 'new'). There is also the small matter that the entire case against Yor- gen Fenech depends exclusively on the credibility of the pros- ecution's star witness: as, inci- dentally, does the Presidential pardon which made this murder trial possible in the first place. And it is this very credibility that Adrian Delia is now under- mining, with his insistence on 'proof' of the bribery allegation 'within 24 hours'. That ultimatum has not yet expired at the time of writing; but already there are indications that no such proof will be forth-