The criminal court is expected to take a decision on Vincent Muscat’s bail after the murder suspect once again appeared in court demanding a release from arrest.
Also known as ‘il-Kohhu’, the 55-year-old, along with brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, is accused of the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia on 16 October 2017.
Muscat’s defence lawyer, Arthur Azzopardi, claimed that there were many cases involving murder where the accused was granted bail three months within his or her arraignment.
Azzopardi gave the court a list of accused that did not remain in police custody for more than twenty months — as in the case of his client — since their arraignment and were granted bail notwithstanding the grave nature of their crimes.
“We can’t keep saying that a person has to be remanded in custody since an investigation is still ongoing,” Azzopardi said.
He added that jurisprudence from the European Court of Human Rights agreed with his statements and that according to Maltese law, the limit of how much time one is remanded in preventive custody is 20 months, which had elapsed in his client’s case.
A decision on Muscat’s bail is expected to be taken by the court in the coming days.
