Undercover policemen followed a “Maltese gangster” to Sicily a few hours after journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered, the Times of Malta has learnt.
Police sources said that soon after the car bomb murder on October 16, orders were issued to keep a close watch on a number of known, hard criminals.
“One of the criminals under police surveillance travelled to Sicily in the hours after the assassination and was followed there. We suspected this person could have been travelling to pay for the murder,” the sources said.
The criminal was noted “behaving suspiciously” in Sicily, the sources added, visiting bars and other places known to the Italian police. However, nothing was observed that could have been suspected as being a “payoff”, they said.
Little in the way of new information into the murder investigation has emerged so far, with investigators admitting it was a “complicated” case.
We suspected this person could have been travelling to pay for the murder
“We do have theories and a number of leads, some more concrete than others, but please appreciate that if we give too much information on what we are thinking, we will give the game away,” the sources said, pointing out that links to the so-called ‘dirty oil’ investigation was just one of the avenues being explored.
The dirty oil operation involves the sale of smuggle fuel originating from Libya.
Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia adopted much the same line when he was asked about the investigation in Parliament on Monday, saying that he could not give any information.
Replying to a parliamentary question by Nationalist MP Simon Busuttil, Dr Farrugia said two inquiries were under way, by the inquiring magistrate and the police, and he had no information about the inquiry Magistrate Anthony Vella was conducting.
He noted that many of the experts brought to Malta by the police had handed their reports to the magistrate and the police had no direct access to them unless the magistrate decided to release them.
Additionally, the magistrate had access to a number of personal items belonging to Ms Caruana Galizia, while the police had not been granted similar access unless the inquiring magistrate asked them to look into a particular matter.
Asked if the police would hold another crime conference after the “calamitous” one given by the Police Commissioner a few days after the murder, Dr Farrugia said the police would let the public know when concrete progress was made.