Koħħu’s daughter had approached Joseph Muscat during Christmas greetings at Castille

Murder suspect Vince Muscat’s daughter had attended the prime minister’s Christmas greetings with the public in 2018 to ask about her father’s fate, Joseph Muscat has revealed. 

Testifying in front of the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry, Muscat said that a couple of days before the public event at Castille he received information from the Security Services that murder middleman Melvin Theuma was going to book a photo with him.

“I told them to show me who he is as I had no idea what he looks like. There were some 300 or 400 people. What shocked me was that right after Theuma there was a young lady who told me what are we going to do about Vince Muscat. I asked who, and she said ‘il-Koħħu’, she was his daughter. I told security and the photo op ended,” Muscat testified.

He said this was the only time he had met Theuma, who almost a year later was granted a presidential pardon to tell all about Caruana Galizia’s assassination.

At the time, Theuma was a subject of interest for the murder investigation but police had not arrested him yet and were still trying to discover what information the man could have on the possible mastermind.

From Muscat’s testimony, it appears that Theuma’s phone was being tapped by the Security Service, which is how they got to know of the man’s intention to turn up for the public Christmas greetings.

The former prime minister surmised in front of the inquiry that the incident could have been “a botched frame up”. He did not give further details.

Vince Muscat, who was one of three men arrested in December 2017 and charged with Caruana Galizia’s murder, had requested a presidential pardon sometime in the first half of 2018. This was never given to him.

It appears that his daughter tried to exert pressure for the pardon to be given by turning up in front of Muscat and asking him what would happen to her father.

This is the first time that these facts have emerged in public.

Theuma had already posed for a photograph inside Castille with chief of staff Keith Schembri before the 2017 general election, when the latter arranged for him to be given a government job. However, Muscat denied knowledge of that incident when asked whether he was aware that Theuma had posed for a photo with Schembri or that he had been given a public sector job.