The investigation into the murder of Malta’s most famous journalist has done more than plunge the country into crisis.
Updated at 4:15 a.m. EST on Friday, December 12, 2019.
On a tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea, on the fringes of the European Union, something incredible is unfolding. A political crisis and a social uprising, spurred by investigative journalism, are revealing the failures of Europe.
The case is complex: Malta’s best-known journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was assassinated by a car bomb in October 2017. The murder has not yet been solved. A businessman charged last weekend with complicity in her death has reportedly told police that the prime minister’s chief of staff was involved in ordering the hit.
Yet the bottom line is simple: If the Maltese government doesn’t step aside to allow independent investigations to proceed, Europe—as a set of institutions, values, and protections—will have failed.