Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1345126
12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 28 FEBRUARY 2021 OPINION Raphael Vassallo Everything neatly wrapped up… except the motive AFTER decades of careful de- liberation, I think I have finally figured out why people seem to have such low expectations of the criminal justice system. And the answer is so simple, it can be summed up in just two words: Scooby Doo. Oh yeah, and Shaggy, too. Not to mention the rest of the 'Mys- tery Incorporated' gang, who raised my entire generation to believe in a number of deeply in- accurate myths about crime de- tection. Such as: a) that all crimes can be solved by simply 'unmasking the villain' at the end; b) that villains always have sim- ple, one-dimensional motives (as a rule, to scare away people from the scene of their illegal activity, etc.); c) that villains always sponta- neously confess to their crimes when cornered (Remember? 'And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you pesky kids…'), and lastly; d) that the results of the gang's investigation will always be enough to confirm that justice has, in fact, been upheld by the end of every episode ('Well, that just about wraps everything up'…) There are, however, a few snags with the traditional Scooby Doo formula. For starters: a case can only be described as 'closed' once the suspects are duly found guilty of their crimes in a court of law (and, even then, only after the fi- nal appeal). But those cartoons never real- ly delved into the aftermath of all the mysteries they claim to have 'solved'. Who's to say, for instance, that the 'unmasked vil- lain' would not go on to hire a top criminal lawyer, exploit weakness in the prosecution's case, and eventually get acquitted by the law-courts on all charges? (You never thought of that, did you, Scoob?) Much more seriously, however: our collective experience of the criminal justice system rarely, if ever, gets 'wrapped up' quite so neatly. Consider, for instance, the latest developments in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder investigation: which, on closer scrutiny, seem to mirror some aspects of the archetypal Scooby Doo plot almost to the letter. First there was the (not-exact- ly spontaneous) confession of Vincent 'Il-Koħħu' Muscat (who 'would have probably got away with it, too… if it wasn't for the pesky FBI'). Then there was a press con- ference by the Police Commis- sioner, who claimed that: 'every person, from mastermind to ex- ecutioners […] had been appre- hended'. And all you have to do, to turn that into a precise replica of the classic Scooby Doo final scene, is simply replace the word 'apprehended' with: 'unmasked'. Lastly, there was the same premature declaration of 'case closed'… when the legal trial (of all but one of the suspects in- volved: Vincent Muscat, who has already been jailed) has yet to even begin in earnest. So much for the similarities. There is, however, at least one significant difference. For re- gardless how lame or repetitive the cartoon's resolution always was… in the end, Scooby and co. invariably gave us a good reason (even if it was, ultimately, always the same) for the bad guys' be- haviour. We were not just told 'who' they were… but also exactly 'why' they did what they did. Unfortunately, however, there is no equivalent for this anywhere in the official conclusions of the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder inquiry. With Vincent Muscat's confession, we may indeed be one step close to answering the ques- tion: 'who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia?'; but we remain none the wiser as to precisely 'why' she was killed in the first place. In a nutshell, the investigators have provided everything except the murder motive. And it is a lacuna that they will sooner or later have to close, when (ideally, before) presenting their case in court. For even if we blindly accept Angelo Gafà's claim – i.e., that there are no further arrests to be made, because the police have already caught all the protago- nists involved – when it comes to actually proving their guilt, the police are also going to have to provide the jury with a plausi- ble, ironclad thesis to explain: a) why the murder took place, and (much more pertinently); b) why it was committed specifically – and exclusively – by those par- ticular people. Or at least, they would have to do that with regard to Yor- gen Fenech: the man accused of having commissioned the entire murder to begin with (the rest, being lower down the criminal pecking-order, have an obvi- ous, inbuilt motive for all their crimes: money). But Yorgen Fenech? If we are to believe that he really was the 'be-all and end-all', behind the entire chain of events culminat- ing in that grisly event of October 2017… then – unlike any of the others – 'money' can't exactly be the prime motive. Nor can it be that other usual suspect, when it comes to pre- vious potential suspects in the same murder. Unlike, say, Chris Cardona, Yorgen Fenech had no evident reason to viscerally hate Daphne Caruana Galizia so much. He was hardly one of her more habitual targets (indeed she barely ever mentioned him on her blog at all). Naturally, this brings us to all the theories and speculation that have accumulated in the 14 months since Fenech's arrest; the most popular of which is argua- bly that Fenech had intimated (correctly, it seems) that Daphne Caruana Galizia would eventual- ly unmask him as the owner of 17 Black. But while I can see that to be a major cause for concern, on Fenech's behalf… is it really enough, on its own, for him to have risked so much by murder- ing her? In other words, to throw away an entire multi-million business empire, in exchange for a (possible) life sentence in Cor- radino prison? Well… perhaps. For even if the news did eventually come out an- yway (in November 2018: a full year before his arrest for Daph- ne's murder); and even if there were no immediate legal conse- quences for Fenech himself, as a direct consequence of that reve- lation… …it still spelt an instant end to his public credibility, as a lead- ing Maltese business figure; and it still eventually got him fired, from his all-powerful role as CEO of the Tumas Group. But then, you have to weigh it up against (or, if you prefer, in tandem with) some of the other popular theories. We are told, for instance, that Daphne Caruana Galizia was investigating a leaked cache of Enemalta e-mails at the time of her murder; and that the motive may be linked to Fenech's position as an Electrogas share- holder (and therefore, by exten- sion, to the Panama Papers scan- Yorgen Fenech