Yorgen Fenech anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia murder indiction - One of Malta’s wealthiest businessmen, Yorgen Fenech, has been indicted for the homicide of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, prosecutors said in courtroom documents filed on Wednesday (18 August). No date for the trial has yet been set.
Fenech has been under arrest considering that November 2019, accused of complicity to homicide. He has considering that been undergoing a pre-trial compilation of proof where he pleaded no longer guilty.
Caruana Galizia changed into blown up by using a vehicle bomb as she drove out of her residence on 16 October 2017, in a killing that bowled over Europe and raised questions about the rule of thumb of regulation in the European Union’s smallest member country.
Fenech headed a commercial enterprise empire with a variety of pastimes along with assets, imports and a automobile dealership. He also headed a consortium which changed into controversially offered a government agreement for the constructing of a power station.
Caruana Galizia turned into investigating possible corruption inside the agreement while she turned into killed.
Yorgen Fenech anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia murder
Three guys accused of truly planting and setting off the bomb were arrested in December 2017. One has due to the fact pleaded guilty as a part of a plea good buy and been jailed for 15 years. The other are looking forward to trial.
The murder plot’s self-confessed intermediary, Melvin Theuma, turned state evidence and turned into granted a pardon. He has pointed to Fenech as having tasked him with organising the assassination.
The prosecutors are pushing for a lifestyles sentence for Fenech, court officials said. Fenech changed into arrested on 20 November 2019, while his yacht was simply off Malta in what police say turned into an try to flee the island.
Yorgen Fenech anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia murder
Malta’s then-high minister, Joseph Muscat, introduced his resignation within days of Fenech’s arrest after near hyperlinks had been observed among the businessman and senior authorities officers. Muscat himself has constantly denied wrongdoing.
An unbiased inquiry into the murder of Caruana Galizia said ultimate month that the country needed to endure obligation for the killing after developing a “culture of impunity”.
Yorgen Fenech anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia murder
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Taliban hold some evacuees from attaining Kabul airport, as US vows to complete airlift
Armed contributors of the Taliban kept human beings desperate to escape Afghanistan from reaching Kabul’s airport on Wednesday (18 August), witnesses said, at the same time as President Joe Biden vowed to maintain US troops inside the u . S . A . Until all Americans are evacuated.
Since the Taliban entered Kabul over the weekend, scenes of chaos have unfolded as hundreds are looking for to depart, fearing a go back to the austere interpretation of Islamic regulation imposed all through the preceding Taliban rule that ended twenty years in the past.
“Everyone wants out,” said a member of an Afghan own family after it arrived in Germany. “Every day is worse than the day earlier than. We saved ourselves but we couldn’t rescue our households.”
Witnesses stated Taliban participants averted people from moving into the airport compound, inclusive of people with the vital documents to travel.
“It’s a whole catastrophe. The Taliban have been firing into the air, pushing humans, beating them with AK47s,” said one person who become looking to get thru.
A Taliban official stated commanders and infantrymen had fired into the air to disperse crowds out of doors Kabul airport, but advised Reuters: “We haven't any goal to injure all and sundry.”
As the airlift of Western citizens and Afghans who worked for overseas governments sought to ramp up, Biden said US forces could continue to be until the evacuation of Americans was finished, even supposing that meant staying beyond the 31 August US closing date for whole withdrawal.
The president, who has faced grievance approximately the United States departure, said chaos changed into inevitable. Asked in an interview with ABC News if the go out of US troops might have been dealt with higher, Biden stated: “No. … The idea that come what may, there’s a manner to have gotten out without chaos resulting, I don’t recognise how that takes place.”
US officers have advised the Taliban “that we expect them to permit all American citizens, all third-united states nationals, and all Afghans who wish to go away to do so safely and without harassment,” US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman informed newshounds in Washington.
But the four,500 U.S. Troops in Kabul can not assist convey human beings to the airport for evacuation due to the fact they are targeted on securing the airfield, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin advised a Washington information conference, acknowledging that evacuations had not reached targets.
General Mark Milley, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated security on the Kabul airport become stable and the Taliban have been no longer interfering with US army operations.
Foreign ministers of the Group of Seven nations are because of talk the evacuation attempt and are trying to find to coordinate flights at a virtual meeting on Thursday, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas stated.
About five,000 diplomats, safety team of workers, resource workers and Afghans were evacuated from Kabul within the beyond 24 hours and army flights will retain around the clock, a Western legit advised Reuters.
Anti-Taliban protests in Jalalabad
Some a hundred and fifty km (90 miles) east of Kabul in Jalalabad, at the least three human beings were killed in anti-Taliban protests on Wednesday, witnesses said. The protests provided an early test of the Taliban’s promise of non violent rule.
After seizing electricity, the Taliban said they might now not take revenge towards old enemies and would respect the rights of ladies in the framework of Islamic law.
Two witnesses and a former police authentic told Reuters that Taliban fighters opened fire when citizens tried to install Afghanistan’s national flag at a rectangular in the town, killing 3 and injuring extra than a dozen.
Taliban spokespeople couldn't be reached for remark.
A new government to replace that of President Ashraf Ghani, who's in exile within the United Arab Emirates, may take the form of a ruling council, with Taliban ideally suited chief Haibatullah Akhundzada in standard charge, a senior member of the organization said.
Afghanistan would not be a democracy. “It is sharia law and this is it,” Waheedullah Hashimi instructed Reuters.
A “loss of clarity” over the Afghan authorities precipitated the International Monetary Fund to suspend the us of a’s get right of entry to to assets which includes $440 million in economic reserves. The US Treasury pushed for the flow to make certain that an allocation to Afghanistan scheduled for Monday no longer fall into Taliban hands.
Ghani, who has been bitterly criticised through former ministers for leaving Afghanistan as Taliban forces swept into Kabul on Sunday, stated he had followed the advice of presidency officials. He denied reports he took massive sums of money with him.
“If I had stayed, I would be witnessing bloodshed in Kabul,” Ghani said in a video streamed on Facebook.
The Taliban have cautioned they may impose their legal guidelines less significantly than at some point of their former rule, and a senior legitimate said on Wednesday that the institution’s leaders might be less reclusive than inside the beyond.
‘Time will inform’
Hashimi stated the role of ladies, along with their rights to work and schooling and dress code, could in the long run be determined via a council of Islamic scholars.
“They will decide whether or not they should wear hijab, burqa, or handiest (a) veil plus abaya or some thing, or not. That is up to them,” he told Reuters.
Under the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule, girls have been prevented from running, ladies were no longer allowed to go to school and girls needed to wear all-enveloping burqas to exit.
Many Afghans have been sceptical of the Taliban promises.
“My circle of relatives lived beneath the Taliban and maybe they really want to exchange or have changed, but handiest time will inform and it’s going to become clear very soon,” stated Ferishta Karimi, who runs a tailoring shop for women.
