Two hit men sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of Maltese journalist Caruana Galizia

The trial against brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio, 57 and 59 years old, respectively, main suspects in the murder of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, began and ended this Friday.

In a surprising twist, both have pleaded guilty - contradicting previous statements - and have been sentenced to 40 years in prison, according to

and various news agencies.

The confession and conviction come nearly five years after Caruana was killed in a car bombing on October 16, 2017. The defendants, who were arrested two months after the attack, faced a possible life sentence if convicted. that they had been found guilty of planning and detonating the explosive charge, a few meters from the victim's villa, half an hour from the country's capital, Valletta.

By acknowledging responsibility for the facts, the convicted get a lesser sentence and with options to apply mitigating measures.

Both have affirmed that this has been their motivation to admit the facts.

Another of the accomplices of the death, Vince Muscat, had already done it, is serving 15 years in prison and was collaborating with the prosecutors.

"It's a clearing in the clouds," Paul Caruana Galizia, one of the woman's sons, wrote on Twitter after learning of the sentence.

Caruana Galizia was an influential journalist who regularly wrote about corruption in her country.

When she was killed, she was working on a major data leak related to a project to build a power plant.

In fact, she had revealed the existence of a shell company that would receive funds from companies in Panama, linked to the then energy minister, Konrad Mizzi, and another government official, Keith Schembri.

Although the Prosecutor's Office had accused the three men mentioned of the material murder, it suspects that the ideologue of it is the Maltese millionaire Yorgen Fenech.

The latter has denied the accusations, but a taxi driver, Melvin Theuma, has assured that he acted as an intermediary between Fenech and the Degiorgio brothers.

The death of Caruana Galizia called into question security in the country, the smallest in the European Union.

This Sunday, when it will be five years since her death, the European Parliament will organize an act in which the president of the institution, the Maltese Roberta Metsola, will be present.

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