VALLETTA: The son of a murdered Maltese journalist on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of being complicit in his mother’s death in a grisly killing that sent shockwaves across Europe.

Matthew Caruana Galizia, himself a journalist involved in digesting the Panama Papers, said his mother had been assassinated for doing her job in investigating alleged corruption.

In an emotional post on his Facebook page, the son of whistle-blowing blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia accused Muscat of filling his office with crooks and creating a culture of impunity that had turned Malta into a “mafia island”.

“This is a horrible event, a major thing that needs to be investigated, and clarified, and justice needs to be brought,” commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said.

Caruana Galizia, a veteran journalist once described as a “one-woman Wikileaks”, used her widely read blog to make a series of detailed allegations of corruption in Muscat’s inner circle, some based on the Panama Papers data leak.

World editors condemn attack

Her killing has triggered an outpouring of grief on the island of 430,000 people, with thousands expected for a second round of commemorations on Tuesday afternoon in the fortress capital Valletta.

“I am never going to forget, running around the inferno in the field, trying to figure out a way to open the door, the horn of the car still blaring, screaming at two policemen who turned up with a single fire extinguisher to use it,” Matthew Caruana wrote.

“They stared at me. ‘I’m sorry, there is nothing we can do,” one of them said. “I looked down and there were my mother’s body parts all around me. I realised they were right, it was hopeless.”

The World Editors Forum and WAN-IFRA have condemned the car bomb attack.

“We condemn this shocking attack, which targeted not just one our bravest and brightest but also our very mission as truth seekers,” said President of the World Editors Forum, David Callaway.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2017