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Forensic scientists at the crime scene in 2017
Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi / REUTERS
Five years after the fatal bomb attack on journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, two brothers have been found guilty of murder in Malta.
A judge sentenced the two to 40 years in prison on the very first day of the trial in the capital, Valletta.
After a few hours of trial, the brothers surprisingly pleaded guilty to killing the blogger with a car bomb on October 16, 2017.
The murder caused international outrage.
If the jury found it that morning, the brothers could have been sentenced to life in prison.
Before the two, a third hitman and a taxi driver had already made confessions.
The taxi driver claimed to have acted as an intermediary between the killers and a well-known businessman who had commissioned the assassination.
That entrepreneur and millionaire is in prison awaiting trial.
He denies the allegations.
Caruana Galizia, who was 53 when she died, had regularly reported on corruption, money laundering and other illegal activities in Malta.
According to her research, members of the government were also involved.
Her death sparked mass protests in Malta.
In the course of a serious political crisis in the Mediterranean country caused by the murder, the then Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had to resign.
czl/dpa/AFP
