Paul Caruana Galizia, author of A Death in Malta

DAPHNE Caruana Galizia was Malta’s best-known journalist. She was the country’s first female columnist, and the first brave enough to write under her own name. She documented the rise of kleptocracy in her country and paid for it with her life.

In 2017, when her son Paul was at work, his eldest brother called to say their mother had been killed by a car bomb.

Paul, his two brothers and their father, set out to discover who was responsible for Daphne’s assassination.

Who stood to profit from ending the life of a writer whose courage and determination threatened the powerful with the truth.

Paul, who lives in London, became a journalist after Daphne’s murder and has won various awards for his reporting. With his brothers, he has received a Magnitsky Human Rights Award and an Anderson-Lucas-Norman Award for campaigning to achieve justice for Daphne.

His book A Death in Malta examines the dark side of an island beloved by tourists, and explores how the globalisation of corruption has damaged a modern European country. It’s about Malta’s escape from colonialism and its descent into a tribal, partisan black hole. It’s about courage and dedication, about writing the truth in the face of relentless intimidation.

It’s also a son’s tender tribute to his mother.

Early on in the book, Paul brings up “amoral familism”, an anthropological term which, he says, his mother thought explained “the culture of corruption” that dominated her reporting on Malta. It’s a way of thinking where family advantage is considered more important than state institutions.

After independence from the UK in 1964, Malta continued to be dominated by the Catholic Church and whichever party was in power. Inevitably, the media was controlled by these institutions. When Daphne was growing up, she likened their lives to “those of young people behind the Iron Curtain”, where only one brand of toothpaste was available.

She yearned for another life; an idea of Europe that she read about in Western magazines.

In 1987, the Nationalist Party returned to government and under Edward Fenech Adami it looked as though the country would strengthen its relationship with Western Europe.

Accession negotiations began in the 1990s, and Malta joined the EU in 2004, but a globalised economy and rackety 60s institutions became, Paul suggests, a toxic mix.

The election of the Labour party’s Joseph Muscat as prime minister in 2013 heralded the rise of autocratic populism.

Daphne’s journalism was increasingly censored. People in power leaned upon her editors and ensured advertising revenue was withheld from the papers she wrote for. Daphne’s family grew up under constant threat. She was sued and slandered, they were sent parcels of human excrement, received abusive phonecalls and Daphne would check the underside of her car for bombs before taking her kids to school. But, Paul says, she did her best to protect them from this.

So when there was an attempted arson attack on the house, she claimed it was caused by an unattended candle. After they arrived home to find their dog dead on the doorstep, its throat slit, she told them it had been accidentally poisoned.

Daphne turned to blogging and became the most important source of news in the country. Eventually her daily blog received more visits than the combined circulation of Malta’s daily newspapers. She continued to be persecuted by those she criticised, including Muscat. Paul describes some of the smear campaigns that diminished her criticism, the misogynistic abuse, and how becoming an online figure of hate further undermined her work. But his mother carried on writing until her brutal murder.

Paul and his family have fought hard for justice. They lobbied the European Parliament and Council of Europe to put pressure on Malta as it became clear that senior politicians had tried to cover up Daphne’s murder. The public inquiry concluded that the state bore responsibility for the assassination and made certain recommendations that have not yet been implemented.

At the time of writing, two hitmen have been found guilty of planting the bomb and are serving 40-year sentences, another is serving 15 years. The middleman, taxi driver Melvin Theuma, was granted a presidential pardon in 2019 in exchange for testimony against the other (alleged) plotters.

Yorgen Fenech, a wealthy businessman, and the subject of numerous investigations by Daphne, is accused of ordering her murder. His trial is due to take place this year.

Paul says the popular movement of support for his mother since her death has become a real force to be reckoned with. “Occupy Justice” was set up in 2017 by a group of women and has become a regular feature of public life in Malta.

Through the combined efforts of civil society and the courts, he hopes things are slowly changing for the better.

• A Death in Malta. By Paul Caruana Galizia. Hutchinson Heinemann, £18.99