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MaltaToday 28 July 2021 MIDWEEK

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3 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 28 JULY 2021 NEWS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 "I didn't save emails on my mother's laptop or iPad or an- ything" Caruana Galizia said, pointing out that this would have been a security risk. "Where were they stored be- fore?", asked Mercieca, suggest- ing that they would have had to have been stored on the laptop before being transferred to the external hard disk that he car- ried around with him at the time. But Caruana Galizia reject- ed the suggestion. "Of course I didn't use my mother's comput- er to do that...why? Because it's my mother's computer. I find it strange that I would be using my mother's computer while my mother needed it to work on it" replied Caruana Galizia. He told Magistrate Rachel Montebello that the leak con- sisted of "over 100,000 doc- uments" mostly in electronic form. The cross-examination was never going to be a pleasant one, but yesterday tensions reached boiling point when Caruana Galizia disclosed that Fenech had been convicted of drug charges in the USA and had been "behaving erratically before and after the murder." Mercieca objected to the men- tioning of this fact, but was con- tradicted by parte civile lawyer Jason Azzopardi, who said "you cannot censor the truth." "You censor the truth!" Mer- cieca roared back, accusing the other side of being selective with the evidence produced. The defence objected at sever- al junctures during the witness' testimony, at a point describing his testimony as "media fodder." Caruana Galizia continued: "We had discovered that Fenech was convicted of drug posses- sion and was going through a personal crisis at the time. We knew Yorgen Fenech was be- having erratically before and after the murder and secondly my mother would have con- sidered it to be of humongous public interest that one of the main shareholders [in Electro- gas] had been convicted of an offence in the USA." "There was worry at the banks about the loan facility given to Electrogas, and in this email you have the Yorgen Fenech side of things. 'Our concern is Due Dil- igence,'" he quoted. Fenech was a key person in the journalists' investigation, he said . "We considered him to be a member of this clique that my mother was writing about." "Because we saw that Fenech was hugely influential, the vol- ume of emails being exchanged, what was being asked of him by shareholders and Electrogas employees, this led to my moth- er focusing more on him." "As a reporter this draws at- tention to you but it is the risk you have to take as a journalist," he said. Magistrate Rachel Montebel- lo is presiding over the case. Superintendent Keith Arnaud and Inspector Kurt Zahra are prosecuting, aided by Deputy Attorney General Philip Galea Farrugia. Fenech's defence lawyers are Marion Camilleri, Charles Mer- cieca and Gianluca Caruana Curran. Lawyers Jason Azzo- pardi and Therese Comodini Cachia are appearing parte civile for the Caruana Galizia family. "We knew Yorgen Fenech was behaving erratically before and after the murder" CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 He now faces a €1,400 spend for his hotel quarantine, despite owning a Malta resi- dence. "The room I would be using can be used for others who truly need it." Angola is listed as a dark red country, and travellers arriving from the country into Malta have to quarantine at one of govern- ment's quarantine hotels. On Tuesday, the Malta Tourism Authority approved the Sliema Hotel as a second quarantine hotel. The call was issued after the Marina Hotel St George's Bay started approaching full capac- ity earlier this month. Mansfield is a residence permit-holder and has lived in Malta since 1980, but works on a rotational basis, requiring him to leave the country before the start of his next rotational shift. He is the owner of three properties in Malta. Had he been granted approval by the health authorities, Mansfield would be quar- antining alone at one his properties. His present work rotation started on 17 June 2021, and will be ending on the 28 July, arriving in Malta on Thursday morning. Fol- lowing the break, he will be returning to An- gola on 24 August 2021 until early October. Mansfield was fully vaccinated in Malta, with the second jab taken on 20 April. Emails sent by Mansfield's son David to the COVID-19 vetting address on Monday 12 July remained unanswered for 12 days, before the Superintendent of Public Health Charmaine Gauci was copied in, in a fol- low-up email. In a reply on 23 July, the COVID-19 re- sponse team told David Mansfield that his father would need to need to quarantine in a hotel, as he would be arriving from a dark red zone. "Upon arrival in Malta your father will be required to observe a mandatory quarantine period of 14 days in a quarantine facility against payment of €100 per night per room including breakfast only," the email read. "To be able to travel to Malta he must present a negative nasopharyngeal PCR test not older than 72 hours on arrival." Mansfield's request for his father to quar- antine at his private residence were turned down, and he was told that the two-week quarantine period must be spent at the des- ignated hotel. "Since Angola falls under the dark red cate- gory for Malta we regret that this request for exemption to quarantine in the quarantine hotel cannot be acceded to," the reply read. Despite a follow-up email, Mansfield is yet to receive a reply on his request to be granted special permission to quarantine at his own home. When MaltaToday called the COVID-19 helpline on 111, a representative said that cases like this one are analysed on a case-by- case basis, and there was no clear-cut direc- tion on what one should do. He said an email should be sent to the COVID-19 vetting de- partment. Questions sent to the health ministry on Monday have remained unanswered. Vaccinated oil industry worker forced to quarantine in hotel despite owning property in Malta COVID-19 Recoveries trump new cases NEW COVID-19 recoveries have ex- ceeded new infections, as active virus cases now stand at 2,230. According to health authorities, Malta registered 142 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday. At the same time, 174 patients have since recovered from the virus. 37 patients are currently being treated at Mater Dei Hospital, one of whom is receiving care in the hospital's ITU. The average age of yesterday's new cases was 34. No details were given on specific age ranges. Health professionals carried out 4,031 swab tests on Monday. Since the start of the pandemic, over 1,075,000 swabs have been con- ducted. Overall, Malta has registered 33,904 cases of COVID-19 over the past year and a half. From these, 30,857 patients have recovered, while 421 people died. With regards to the COVID-19 vaccination drive, 371,802 peo- ple are now fully vaccinated, with 746,883 doses having been adminis- tered since last December. Thomas Mansfield

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