On December 1st 2019 Malta’s Prime Minister announced his resignation for the following month, ending his seven-year rule in the European Union’s smallest country. The decision came after two years of investigations into the killing of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the subsequent political crisis that hit the island’s political elite.

The car bomb attack killed Daphne Caruana Galizia in October 2017, shocking not only Malta but the entire European Union. The murder of Galizia was questioned right away due to the brutal nature of her assassination and intimidation she faced during her career as a journalist. Caruana Galizia was an important journalist for the country due to her popular blog Running Commentary where she was publishing her findings about the country’s public figures and exposing their involvement in corruption. The blog was widely popular in Malta and beyond since its establishment in 2008, despite facing criticism by Malta’s top leaders and their supporters. During the period before her death, Galizia was working on several articles where she was exposed links between the country’s well-known figures and Panama papers such as Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s former Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, former Minister of Tourism Konrad Mizzi and first lady, Michelle Muscat. In Caruana Galizia’s writings, she claimed that these officials had offshore companies in both Panama and New Zealand. Due to Caruana Galizia’s courageous investigative journalism and “one-woman Wikileaks” approach, names close to the Maltese government immediately became the main suspects in the case.

Following the murder of Caruana Galizia, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat promised to leave no stones unturned, and started investigations and arrests, even with the participation of security and forensic experts from other countries. In December 2017, the government announced the arrest of 10 people in connection with the inquiry. Among the suspects, George Degiorgio, Alfred Degiorgio, and Vince Muscat were charged with the car bomb attack in July 2019, but none of them were brought to the trials and no details were revealed about the mastermind of the case. Months after the first charges, prominent Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech was arrested by the authorities, accused to be the mastermind in the Caruana Galizia murder. The arrest came days after a taxi-driver, Melvin Theuma, was arrested for his role as a middleman in the killing. Theuma was later granted a presidential pardon by President George Vella, with the request of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, when he exposed the involvement of Fenech in ordering the assassination. Theuma accused Fenech of paying €150,000 for killing Caruana Galizia. During his arrest Fenech gave further names involved in the event, saying that Joseph Muscat’s Chief of Staff Keith Schembri was directly involved. After the accusations of Fenech, Schembri resigned from his role, and he was then followed by other names such as Minister of Tourism Konrad Mizzi and Minister of Economy Chris Cardona. After a series of resignations of those close to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, the once top-tier candidate for the President of the European Council, saw his image destroyed and later had to announce his resignation on December 1st.

All of the names involved in the brutal murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, were frequent subjects of her investigations and they were already facing various accusations. Daphne’s blog continued even after her death by a research group called The Daphne Project, where the group was continuing to expose hidden connections, also trying to find links to Caruana Galizia’s murder. Thanks to the findings of The Daphne Project, it was revealed in 2018 that Yorgen Fenech was the owner of the Dubai-registered company 17 Black, which was already mentioned in Caruana Galizia’s investigations, prior to her death. The Daphne Group also found out that 17 Black had links with two companies in Panama which were said to have belonged to Konrad Mizzi and/or Keith Schembri. Fenech was ousted as the head of Black 17 after the series of findings, making it the reason why he decided to turn his back on his long-time ally Keith Schembri and turning him to the security forces. Despite all these reports before and after the death of Caruana Galizia, Muscat didn’t do anything in calling for the resignation of his allies such as Schembri, Mizzi. This was the main issue where he lost his credibility in front of his citizens and institutions, causing his house of cards to collapse.

Joseph Muscat will resign from his duty as the Prime Minister on 12 January 2020, ending his chapter in the long-running story that started with the murder of a courageous journalist on her way back home. Despite a series of resignations there are still hundreds of unanswered questions about the murder and the findings of Caruana Galizia. Galizia and The Daphne Project’s ambitious works showed the power of investigative journalism to the world, exposing documents which weren’t only showing the ugly face of hidden political games in Malta but also beyond. Killings of other names like Caruana Galizia, Jan Kuciak in Slovakia and Viktoria Marinova in Bulgaria, show that investigative journalism is still facing serious burdens and threats, even within the European Union. On the other hand, the episode of Caruana Galizia shows that the courage of a person may have serious impacts, wherever it may be, and even after their death.

L'articolo Killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia: The event that shook Malta’s political elite proviene da InsideOver.

Malta’s Joseph Muscat thought, on Sunday night, that he was giving the people what they wanted. He was wrong. Battered by a political crisis rooted in the murder of a journalist, the prime minister bowed to public anger, announcing his plan to stand down in January. But for the slain woman’s family, Muscat’s EU counterparts, and – crucially – the maddened Maltese masses, it is not enough. Worried that his continued tenure prevents a truly free investigation into one-time cabinet colleagues, they want him gone now.

For two years, Malta’s political establishment has quaked from the fallout of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder. A renowned investigative journalist, Caruana Galizia had exposed corruption at the highest levels of the Valletta government. Among her scoops was the involvement of Muscat’s chief of staff and tourism minister – Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi – in the ‘Panama Papers’ scandal. Both men deny any involvement in the 2017 car-bombing that claimed the reporter’s life – but last week, as allegations mounted, Schembri and Mizzi resigned.

Three men – two brothers and a third individual – have been charged with the killing, but few believe that they were anything more than hired hit-men. The search for the true mastermind brought police aboard a luxury yacht last month, trying to slip from Maltese water at dawn. Its owner, casino magnate Yorgen Fenech, has since been charged with complicity in the killing, which he denies. Caruana Galizia was reportedly looking into his business affairs when she died.

When Fenech went before the courts, he made a shocking accusation. Schembri had conspired in the murder plot, the businessman alleged, requesting immunity from prosecution in return for material evidence. For Muscat, an old school friend of Schembri’s, it was a disastrous development. Even when his former chief of staff was released by police without charge, the prime minister struggled to defend his proximity to those caught up in the case. Some decisions “could have been better made,” he admitted on Sunday, announcing his intention to stand down in the new year.

For Caruana Galizia’s loved ones, it’s a pitiful gesture. A day after Muscat’s declaration, the family launched legal action against the prime minister, demanding he resign immediately and play no further role in the murder probe. “Fenech wasn’t acting alone. The other villains are hiding behind Muscat,” said Mandy Mallia, the slain journalist’s sister, at a raucous demonstration outside government headquarters on Tuesday.

The vitriol of the protesters – some of whom pelted the prime minister with eggs as he arrived – speaks to Muscat’s dizzying fall from grace. Winning two landslide elections in his six-year tenure, he has enjoyed a largely successful premiership outside of the scandal. Malta is Europe’s fastest-growing economy – the island’s GDP leapt 6.8% in 2018 – and has seen significant social reform in recent years.

But the chaotic affair has, in the minds of many, tarnished his reputation beyond recovery. When Schembri was first outed as a beneficiary of secretive Panama shell companies by Caruana Galizia, Muscat defended him. And when Fenech – an alleged associate of Schembri – was revealed to be a suspect in the case, the prime minister still stood by his strategist – even including him in meetings on the investigation.

This apparently laissez-faire approach to alleged wrongdoing is below the prime minister’s position, critics argue. Beseeching Muscat’s MPs to put “national interest” before party loyalty, Opposition Leader Adrian Delia has called on them to “do what [he] didn’t do of his own volition” – immediately withdraw from office.

Delia’s rationale is clear: while Muscat clings to power, can the police probing members of his administration act with absolute liberty? The prime minister is himself free of any alleged connection to the murder – but it’s the principle that counts. For many in the country, the divide between Muscat and those suspected of involvement in the killing is just too narrow to tolerate.

Among EU ranks, there are concerns too. This week, an urgent delegation of MEPs arrived in Malta to examine the island nation’s rule of law. “Not reassured,” was how the mission’s leader described her feelings after meeting with the prime minister and promptly called on him to quit without delay.

For Manfred Weber MEP, a senior member of the group, the apparent lack of political accountability threatened the “entire European project,” he said. A hasty conclusion to the debacle is what the EU wants most. Left unchecked, the culture of impunity that has plagued the Caruana Galizia case could erode the bloc’s rule of law more widely. Free speech, democracy, justice – key pillars of EU doctrine – are all under threat in Malta, observers say.

But Muscat seems unperturbed. He struck a defiant tone on Sunday, saying the affair must not be allowed to “define everything that [Malta] is”. But for those furious citizens out on the streets, not least members of Caruana Galizia’s family, the case is everything to the island nation. Until he’s gone, that cannot change.

L'articolo Malta’s Prime Minister Muscat Says He’ll Resign proviene da InsideOver.

Nigerian police have arrested a man on Friday who confessed to being a serial killer. The 39-year old man, identified as Gracious David-West, was arrested as he attempted to flee Port Harcourt, Rivers State, to a neighbouring city.

David-West, who is from Port Harcourt, Rivers State, is Nigeria’s first recorded serial killer. He confessed to over 15 murders, claiming he had no motive except for an “urge” to kill.

“I don’t know what is making me kill. Immediately the urge comes on me, I kill,” he said.

“After killing, I will start regretting. I even went to a church and told the pastor that I have been killing girls in hotels. The pastor invited me to see the senior pastor during a programme but I waited and couldn’t see him so I left the church and went back and lodged in a hotel and resumed killing.”

The cult member also confessed that he stole money from his victims, using the stolen money to lure future victims.

“While the argument is on, some of them will tell me not to kill them that they have money in their accounts and can offer anything just to save their lives.

“I will ask them how much? They will check it before me; when I confirm the account balance, I will collect the PIN and after the day breaks, when I must have killed them, I will go to ATM and collect the money in the account.

“I will use the money and get other girls. I have killed five girls in Port Harcourt, seven in Owerri and three in Lagos. I started the killing in Lagos, that was where I got money because the first girl had N52,000 ($145) in her account. After that I went to Port Harcourt, then Owerri, [then] I returned to Port Harcourt. The last girl I killed, I met her at the club,” he said.

Port Harcourt State police detective, Mustapha Dandaura, said: “One of the hotels in Port Harcourt who complied with our directive to install CCTV cameras in the reception and hotel corridors was monitoring the camera and saw the picture of the suspect Gracious David West and uploaded the video online and it went viral on social media.

“The hotel later reported to the police about the development and released to us the telephone number he dropped with the hotel.

“We began to track him on his phone, and with God on our side, he was arrested … yesterday [Thursday] afternoon.

“The command’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), team were on their usual stop and search duties when they intercepted a commercial bus heading towards Uyo. When they offloaded the passengers of the vehicle for one-on-one search, with the help of the viral photo, they saw the suspect in the same attire (strip T-shirt and blue trousers), on the video, which he is also putting on now [when we arrested him].

“The SARS team called my attention to it … and I asked that they brought him straight to my office. They brought him in handcuffs, the moment he stepped into my office, I called him by his name, David-West, he answered, and I said to him, ‘Welcome to my office.'”

“He then said to me, ‘Please sir, I am ready to tell you the truth, I don’t want any problem’,” the police chief concluded.

West had the same signature, tying a white cloth to the victims’ legs, necks and hands. Last week, women in Southern Nigeria marched in the streets to protest the murders, although it was uncertain at the time if the murders were by the same man.

“Their killers must be found,” they chanted. “We the ladies are no longer safe in this state,” said protester, Lucy Okeke. “All we are demanding is greater protection for the women in the society, [and] all the victims of this so-called serial killer.”

Activist Emem Okon accused police of slut-shaming the victims, calling them prostitutes, and refusing to take investigations seriously.

According to Nigeria’s Ministry of Health, three in ten Nigerians suffer from mental health issues. The World Health Organisation places it fifteenth in the world for suicide rates. Despite the country’s mental health crisis, the country has only eight public mental health hospitals shared among a population of about 202,000,000 people.

L'articolo Nigeria’s Serial Killer Suspect Confesses to Police proviene da InsideOver.

It starts on a cold Wednesday in winter 2018. At a little after 4:30 on February 21, two men in a Citroen Berlingo arrive in the small Slovak village of Vel’Ká Mača (around 40 miles from Bratislava). They wait until 6:30 before Tomas Szabo leaves driver Miroslav Marček and walks off into the night.

Like a grim scene from a Coen Brothers movie, the ill-starred Szabo arrives at the house of his target, investigative journalist Ján Kuciak, and finds it empty.

Meanwhile, Kuciak, 27, a reporter with Bratislava – based news portal Aktuality.sk had arrived home by train from the capital and discovered his car had a flat battery. He called his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová, also 27, to pick him up from the station.

Undeterred, Marček, a former soldier, and Szabo, a former police officer, remained patient. Szabo returns to the house two hours later. This time he finds Kuciak and his fiancée at home and shoots them both dead.

Ján Kuciak was the first journalist murdered in Slovakia since the country became independent on January 1, 1993, and it shocked the nation.

His recent work had focused on investigating tax fraud and the misappropriation of European funds, and he had also written about corruption at government levels.

The last piece published before his death was released on February 9, 2018, when he provided a detailed account of VAT tax fraud implicating well-known, wealthy and well-connected Slovak businessman Marián Kočner.

At the time of his death, Kuciak was working on a story that has been described as ‘sensational’. He had linked the Slovak government, led at the time by Prime Minister Robert Fico, to a group of Italian businessmen allegedly members of an organised crime syndicate.

One name that featured prominently in Kuciak’s investigation was Antonino Valdala believed to be a member of ‘Ndrangheta’, a well known mafia-style operation based in Calabria.

Editor-in-Chief of Aktuality.sk, Peter Bardy, fearing for Kuciak, texted his reporter a couple of days before his murder to ask him if he felt at risk or if he wanted a ‘safe house’.

Ironically, Kuciak said he didn’t feel under any threat.

The murders caused uproar and inspired the formation of ‘For A Decent Slovakia ‘. The Slovak people believed the murders were related to Kuciak’s work and linked to political corruption, and came out onto the streets in their thousands to protest.

“When we found out that Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová were killed,” Eva Lavríková, spokeswoman of ‘For A Decent Slovakia’ told Inside Over. “Our first reaction was to show we don’t want to live in a country where something like this – to kill a journalist because of his work – is possible.”

The country descended into political chaos and on March 15, 2018, Prime Minister Robert Fico and his Interior Minister Robert Kalinak resigned. A month later, in the wake of the Kuciak and Kusnirova killings and questions about the initial investigation, Czech-born, Tibor Gašpar, President of the Police of Slovakia also stepped down.

“Our initiative was… at first simply an organic, spontaneous reaction to current events,” Lavrikova remembered “Later on, when we saw how our politicians reacted, we realised that if we really want to live in a better, decent society, it’s a long-term commitment and we all need to do something. We aim to be an active society which can stand for democratic principles.”

Posthumously, Kuciak was changing Slovak history.

Perhaps stirred by protests and resignations, the police investigation into the murders of Kuciak and Kušnírová led to four arrests in September 2018 and the story started to unravel.

Small-time pizzeria entrepreneur Zoltán Andruskó had been approached by Alena Zsuzsová, an Italian translator and go-between employee of Marian Kočner. Zsuzsová offered to pay Andruskó €50,000 and take care of Zoltan’s €20,000 of debt.

It was an offer the hapless Andruskó could not turn down. With little idea of how to assassinate anyone, he recruited Szabo and his cousin Marček to help him carry out the hit. The trail soon led back to Kočner who was arrested in March this year and charged with ordering Kuciak’s murder.

But, of course, and as ‘For A Decent Slovakia’ had recognised, this story goes right to the heart of government, and the fact that Kuciak had identified the presence of an Italian organised crime syndicate in Slovakia.

In August, 2019, Slovak newspapers started releasing the transcripts of hundreds of pages of texts leaked from the police investigation and related to Marián Kočner.

These texts link Kočner to Fico’s government. One message seems to show that the Slovak businessman is keen that the ruling party, Fico’s Smer-SD stay in power so that they all avoid: ‘ending up in jail’. Other messages reference meetings with ‘Squarehead’, Fico’s nickname.

A short time after the murders Kočner had texted of having breakfast in the Maldives with Bela Bugar, chairman of Most-Hid, Smer-SD’s coalition partners in government.

Both Fico and Bugar have tried to distance themselves from Kočner and his activities. Fico denies that any meetings, referred to in texts, ever took place, while Bugar now describes Kočner as ‘evil’.

Incredibly, and despite his fall from power Fico remains the leader of the ruling Smer-SD party. A situation that many see as draining the popularity of the party and leaving them vulnerable to defeat at the March 2020 elections, a mere six months away.

The former Prime Minister, however, is defiant, telling the people of Slovakia that: ‘he is not going away’.

Perhaps wary of new political factions like ‘For A Decent Slovakia’ and political parties like Progresivne Slovensko the government has pushed through a new law limiting the resources and private funding for parties. This will hit the new parties hardest and undermine their chances of unseating established groupings like Smer-SD.

Jan Kuciak’s work has taken Slovakia into a new politicised era. He was the inspiration underpinning ‘For A Decent Slovakia’ and like Fico, they have no intentions of ‘going away’ either.

“We were quite a random group of people from all around the country – every single one of us very different,” Eva explained the founding of ‘For A Decent Slovakia’. “But there is one important thing which all of us have in common: we do care about our country and our society.”

L'articolo Death of a Journalist: The Murder Of Ján Kuciak Sparks An Anti-Corruption Movement In Slovakia proviene da InsideOver.

The old woman averts her eyes from the camera, her face a patchwork of sewn skin and flesh. Angry scars and deep indentations meander around her face in a way that makes it unsymmetrical. Her mouth is permanently twisted – slightly to one side – from where she had two months of operations to stitch her face back together.

“They started chopping me because they had machetes. My face was in agony. After they cut me here, my cheek was left hanging,” she says to Unreported World as she points to the engorged scar that sits like an embedded ball in her cheek.

Since surviving the brutal attempt on her life, she now lives in a remote area of Tanzania. After the death of her parents, her brothers accused her of using witchcraft to kill them. To exact revenge on her, they broke into her house one night when she was sleeping.

Thousands of Tanzanian women – in particular, older women – have been murdered over the last two decades after being denounced as witches. It is linked to hundreds of years of beliefs where magic and superstition explicated calamities such as death, sickness, and poor crops. To date, laws still exist in the East African country banning witchcraft.

According to a Pew Research Center report in 2012, around 93 per cent of people in Tanzania still believe in witchcraft, while 60 per cent of the population still rely on witch doctors to rectify maladies associated with witchcraft such as illnesses, drought, or death.

There is no specific accreditation that validates someone as a witch doctor. Generally speaking, the only supporting evidence required is that the local community believes in the person’s “powers”, along with supposed in-depth knowledge of herbs and potions.

Frequently, it is the witchdoctor that seals the fate and demise of the accused. It is widely believed that they possess the insight to pinpoint the witch and her crimes. When peculiarities occur, the villagers will flock to the trusted local witchdoctor, who will then be able to tell them who bewitched whom. The mayhem and killing will commence once the witch’s name is revealed.

A village leader told Unreported World that, often, accusing someone of witchcraft could be a means of frightening the person into signing over land or inheritance.

He spoke about a woman who was denounced as a witch because her family wanted to prevent her from obtaining an inheritance of land. In the end, she had to petition the court to get her family to hand over her share of the money from the 40-acre land sale.

“The brother wanted to sell the land so he could have his share of the money. When she asked for her share, they called her a witch. In the past, land wasn’t worth much but it’s become more valuable. Now there are lots of disputes about land,” he explained.

The Legal and Human Rights Centre reported that 501 people were killed due to mob violence and witchcraft suspicion from January to June 2018, and that at least 17 people were killed each month because of witchcraft beliefs.

Some of the reported incidents included that of Ndilu Mbogashi, a 65-year-old resident of Taba Village in Kilauwa District, who was reportedly killed by an angry mob over witchcraft-suspicion in March 2018. It was claimed that a woman, Amina Lufungulu, who was sick, went to a witchdoctor – who pointed a finger at the late Ndilu Mbogashi.

Another woman in Bukulu Village in Nyangw’ale District was reported to have strangled her six-year-old son to death, claiming that he disguised himself as an old woman during prayers.

Human rights organisations have called for changes to these unfounded accusations coupled with the lack of prosecutions – causing many in remote areas to live in angst and fear.

Witchcraft continues to be a controversial subject in Africa, flourishing on superstition. The legal system is often ill-equipped to fully address the issue with the level of urgency and importance that is required. A report by the University of Dar es Salaam concluded that witchcraft beliefs are too strong to be driven out by legal methods. It instead advocates for the removal of ignorance by introducing a scientific view of the world through [mass] education.

L'articolo Thousands Killed In Tanzania For Being Witches proviene da InsideOver.