Ten years after some of the bloodiest episodes in Malta’s recent underworld history, the six-week jury trial against four men accused of involvement in the murders of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and lawyer Carmel Chircop finally brought tentative closure while laying bare the workings of the Maksar gang.
The men on trial–brothers Robert Agius and Adrian Agius (the Tal-Maksar brothers), Jamie Vella and George Degiorgio–were accused of playing central roles in two of Malta’s most notorious killings.
Prosecutors alleged that Robert Agius and Jamie Vella supplied the bomb used in Caruana Galizia’s 2017 assassination, while Adrian Agius commissioned the 2015 shooting of Carmel Chircop, carried out with the complicity of Vella and Degiorgio. Chircop was shot dead as he opened his garage in Birkirkara, while Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb.
The four men had been arrested in 2021 after a major breakthrough: self-confessed hitman Vince Muscat (known as il-Koħħu) turned state witness after reaching a plea deal related to Caruana Galizia’s murder. As the prosecution’s key witness, Muscat’s testimony ultimately opened the path to formal charges and the long-awaited jury trial.
The trial began on 24 April, more than four years after the arrests. Over six weeks, jurors heard testimony from 157 witnesses, reviewed CCTV footage, phone data, autopsy evidence and crime-scene reconstruction.
The trial hinged on one star witness
Central to the case was whether jurors could rely on Vince Muscat’s testimony. On one hand, prosecutors contended that his descriptions matched forensic, digital and eyewitness evidence. Bullet trajectories, phone records tracing burner phones used in the plot, SIM-card location data and statements from Caruana Galizia’s family all painted a picture broadly consistent with Muscat’s account.
But defence lawyers were relentless in their cross-examination. They portrayed Muscat as a self-interested criminal whose testimony had shifted over time and whose memory for crucial details was hazy. They tried to cast doubt on the police for not pursuing alternative leads in the murder investigations while also arguing that the alleged motive—a €750,000 debt Agius owed to Chircop–was insufficient to warrant murder.
As jurors heard the competing narratives, the judge reminded them it was their duty to decide whether Muscat’s testimony was credible and whether the evidence supported the charges beyond reasonable doubt.
Site visits and the last man to see Daphne alive
Throughout proceedings, jurors were shown graphic photos taken by the police’s forensic team of the two murder victims. They were also taken on two visits to various sites connected with both murders: the Bidnija lookout, in the outskirts of Mosta, where the hitmen observed Caruana Galizia’s house; the garage complex in Birkirkara, where Chircop was shot dead; the Marsa area where the weapon used in the Chircop murder was dumped in the sea; garages in Naxxar and Santa Venera, used by the accused to store the bomb that killed Caruana Galizia.
Jurors also heard testimony from farmer Francis Sant, who was the last person to see Caruana Galizia alive. Sant was travelling in his vehicle in the opposite direction of Caruana Galizia’s, when he heard a small explosion, followed by screams and then a second much larger explosion that turned the journalist’s car into a ball of fire.
A former minister’s testimony
Ostensibly, the person with the highest profile to take the witness stand was former Labour minister Chris Cardona. Cardona only testified for a few minutes in relation to Vince Muscat’s claim that the ex-minister had been involved in a 2015 aborted plot to kill Caruana Galizia.
Muscat had claimed Cardona had approached the Degiorgio brothers through a third party, settling on a price of €150,000 to kill the journalist. She was an incessant critic of Cardona.
Nine hours to decide
While the trial itself took six weeks, the jury only needed nine hours of deliberation to convict the accused. The court found Robert Agius and Jamie Vella guilty of complicity in the murder of Caruana Galizia, and Adrian Agius, Jamie Vella and George Degiorgio guilty of complicity in the murder of Carmel Chircop. Robert Agius was acquitted of the Chircop killing.
Degiorgio had an outburst in the courtroom after the decision was read out. “I’ll tell you where I got the bomb from,” he shouted. “You’ve made a terrible mistake.”
The long shadow of gangland war
The Maksar gang was notorious during the early 2010s for a wave of violent crimes. Adrian and Robert Agius were considered untouchable. Their father was Raymond Agius, a suspected contraband cigarette smuggler with interests in construction and a car dealership. He was shot dead in 2008 in what is believed to have been a hit ordered by a rival smuggler.
Police investigators believed that Agius senior’s rivals thought he was tipping off the police about his competitors’ smuggling activities in exchange for protection. He was shot twice in the head by an assassin in a motorcycle helmet while at Butterfly Bar in Birkirkara. The murder remains unsolved.
Despite years of gang violence, it was only after Caruana Galizia’s assassination in 2017 that investigators managed to build the momentum to arrest and charge senior gang figures.