Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/890548
maltatoday SUNDAY 22 OCTOBER 2017 Interview 15 Having previously led Malta's forensic analysis laboratory for 30 years, ANTHONY ABELA MEDICI says around 500g of semtex may have been used to kill Daphne Caruana Galizia and that he was surprised that a Dutch forensic team was brought in, and not the Italians, who are experts in explosives analysis the car, on the chassis How does that work? Is the det- onator connected to a mobile phone that triggers the detona- tion when it receives a call? Yes, although a battery would still probably be used because the energy produced by the mobile phone is not enough to trigger the detonator. So you would have a switch, a battery, a detonator and loop-back back to the switch. When that switch is turned on by means of a telephone call, then power from the battery would trigger the detonator. It would be good if it were a mobile phone. Why? Surely these would be burner phones on prepaid accounts that would have never been used before? Would you still be able to triangulate where the phone call was triggered from? Yes, exactly. The triangulation would be very important. And that is probably why the Ameri- can FBI were called in; because they are experts on triangulation technology for mobile phones. Besides the FBI, there is also a Dutch forensic team in Malta. What expertise would they provide that the Maltese units do not have? Both the prime minister and the police said that the FBI were here for their technical expertise, not the forensic analysis, which is very strange because the FBI has very strong forensic teams. I am surprised also that the Dutch were called in. In my opin- ion, I would have called in the Italians, and not their scientific analysis units, but their secret services. Since the bombing of a train in the 1970s – what they call the Strage di Bologna – they have built a very strong team of explosives experts and a very good laboratory. The Italians were called to as- sist in the EgyptAir hijacking and they were also called to assist in the investigation into the Ka- rin Grech bombing, where they managed to identify the trig- gering device used. The Italians also helped us investigate several cases of explosive devices used in 1984, when there were 24 bomb- ing incidents using explosive de- vices in the last three months of the year alone. I have seen them working, I have visited their labo- ratories and they are very good. Would Daphne Caruana Galizia have died instantly in this case? Yes, yes, absolutely. That explo- sion would have been practically instantaneous and she wouldn't have even known what hap- pened. She would not have suf- fered. Because it's not as if she were injured and in pain until passing out; the fact that she was blown into so many pieces means it was instantaneous.