A retired judge who was tasked by a court to analyse Whatsapp messages to see if any death threats were made to Daphne Caruana Galizia, has had his task extended to cover a laptop exhibited in court.

Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb on October 16, 2017 and the compilation of evidence against brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio and Vincent Muscat, accused of the murder, is currently underway.

During the last court session on Wednesday, the court heard submissions on a request by Dr William Cuschieri, counsel to Alfred Degiorgio, asking that any of the victim’s laptops as well as her Running Commentary blog, be analyzed for any messages amounting to death threats.

This request followed an earlier one made by the defence and upheld by the court whereby Judge Michael Mallia was appointed to identify any threatening messages sent on WhatsApp to Ms Caruana Galizia.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Dr Cuschieri asked the court to extend Judge Mallia’s task to a laptop exhibited in the records of the case, as well as the blog.

His request prompted a heated discussion as prosecuting Inspector Keith Arnaud pointed out that Daphne’s Running Commentary ran into “thousands of pages” which had remained untouched since her assassination. The pages were still in the public domain and besides, had already been exhibited in the records of the case.

As for the victim’s laptops, the prosecution pointed out that there were no others save for one already included in the records of the compilation.

Parte civile lawyer Jason Azzopardi questioned the request to analyze Daphne’s Running Commentary for death threats.

“Do we need a retired judge to do this?” Dr Azzopardi asked.

Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit upheld the request to extend Judge Mallia’s task to the laptop but rejecting it in relation to the Running Commentary, stating that this was public and was already in the records of the case