<div align="justify">The son of murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of being complicit in his mother's death as the shockwaves from a grisly car bomb killing reverberated across Europe.<br /><br />Matthew Caruana Galizia, also an investigative journalist, described the pain of finding his mother's body blown to pieces and said he believed she had been assassinated for her whistleblowing activity.<br /><br />In an emotional post on his Facebook page, the son accused Muscat of filling his office with crooks and creating a culture of impunity that had turned Malta into a "mafia island".<br /><br />The centre-left premier denies any wrongdoing. But the case looks set to increase scrutiny of Malta by its partners in the European Union.<br /><br />Some members of the bloc have already expressed concern over the island's light-touch regulation of financial services and company registrations, and a controversial scheme that offers an EU passport to wealthy investors.<br /><br />The European Commission said it was horrified by what it termed a likely "targeted attack".<br /><br />"This is a horrible event, a major thing that needs to be investigated, and clarified," commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said.<br /><br />Press freedom group Reporters without Borders described the murder as being like something out of Vladimir Putin's Russia and a rare incident of its kind for an EU state.<br /><br />Caruana Galizia, a veteran journalist who had been called a "one-woman Wikileaks", had lately used her widely read blog to make a series of detailed allegations of corruption in Muscat's inner circle, some based on the Panama Papers data leak.<br /><br />Her killing has triggered grief and anger on the island of 430,000 people, with thousands attending an overnight vigil that was followed Tuesday with a "Justice for Daphne" demonstration outside the main law courts in the fortress capital Valletta.<br /><br />"The state did not defend Daphne," said Andrew Borg Cardona, a prominent lawyer who works with the journalist's husband.<br /><br />Michael Briguglio, a former leader of the island's Greens party, said: "This is a political murder because it clearly has a political context and the state did not protect a journalist who was in danger."<br /><br />"I am never going to forget, running around the inferno in the field, trying to figure out a way to open the door, the horn of the car still blaring, screaming at two policemen who turned up with a single fire extinguisher to use it," Matthew Caruana wrote on Facebook.<br /><br />"They stared at me. 'I'm sorry, there is nothing we can do", one of them said. "I looked down and there were my mother's body parts all around me. I realised they were right, it was hopeless."<br /><br />Muscat has described the killing as "barbaric" and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice with the help of FBI investigators.<br /><br />That pledge from the Labour Party prime minister was dismissed by the victim's son.<br /><br />"It is of little comfort for the prime minister of this country to say that he will 'not rest' until the perpetrators are found, when he heads a government that encouraged that same impunity," he wrote.<br /><br />"First he filled his office with crooks, then he filled the police with crooks and imbeciles, then he filled the courts with crooks and incompetents."<br /><br />The judge in charge of investigating the murder stepped aside from the case Tuesday following objections from the Caruana Galizia family.<br /><br />Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera had been accused of misconduct by the blogger and had threatened her with libel proceedings.<br /><br />Caruana Galizia's death came four months after Muscat won a landslide victory in elections that were called early after she accused his wife of taking kickbacks from Azerbaijan's ruling family and hiding the cash in a secret Panama bank account.<br /><br />The claims, which Muscat denies, were the latest in a string of scandals based on information leaked from the records of the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca.<br /><br />The so-called Panama Papers revealed how wealthy individuals around the world, including several lawmakers, used shell companies in tax havens to hide cash.<br /><br />Keith Schembri, Muscat's chief of staff, and Konrad Mizzi, a government minister, were both forced to admit having undeclared accounts. But the premier resisted pressure to dismiss them, insisting they had done nothing illegal.</div>
<div align="justify">The son of murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of being complicit in his mother's death as the shockwaves from a grisly car bomb killing reverberated across Europe.<br /><br />Matthew Caruana Galizia, also an investigative journalist, described the pain of finding his mother's body blown to pieces and said he believed she had been assassinated for her whistleblowing activity.<br /><br />In an emotional post on his Facebook page, the son accused Muscat of filling his office with crooks and creating a culture of impunity that had turned Malta into a "mafia island".<br /><br />The centre-left premier denies any wrongdoing. But the case looks set to increase scrutiny of Malta by its partners in the European Union.<br /><br />Some members of the bloc have already expressed concern over the island's light-touch regulation of financial services and company registrations, and a controversial scheme that offers an EU passport to wealthy investors.<br /><br />The European Commission said it was horrified by what it termed a likely "targeted attack".<br /><br />"This is a horrible event, a major thing that needs to be investigated, and clarified," commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said.<br /><br />Press freedom group Reporters without Borders described the murder as being like something out of Vladimir Putin's Russia and a rare incident of its kind for an EU state.<br /><br />Caruana Galizia, a veteran journalist who had been called a "one-woman Wikileaks", had lately used her widely read blog to make a series of detailed allegations of corruption in Muscat's inner circle, some based on the Panama Papers data leak.<br /><br />Her killing has triggered grief and anger on the island of 430,000 people, with thousands attending an overnight vigil that was followed Tuesday with a "Justice for Daphne" demonstration outside the main law courts in the fortress capital Valletta.<br /><br />"The state did not defend Daphne," said Andrew Borg Cardona, a prominent lawyer who works with the journalist's husband.<br /><br />Michael Briguglio, a former leader of the island's Greens party, said: "This is a political murder because it clearly has a political context and the state did not protect a journalist who was in danger."<br /><br />"I am never going to forget, running around the inferno in the field, trying to figure out a way to open the door, the horn of the car still blaring, screaming at two policemen who turned up with a single fire extinguisher to use it," Matthew Caruana wrote on Facebook.<br /><br />"They stared at me. 'I'm sorry, there is nothing we can do", one of them said. "I looked down and there were my mother's body parts all around me. I realised they were right, it was hopeless."<br /><br />Muscat has described the killing as "barbaric" and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice with the help of FBI investigators.<br /><br />That pledge from the Labour Party prime minister was dismissed by the victim's son.<br /><br />"It is of little comfort for the prime minister of this country to say that he will 'not rest' until the perpetrators are found, when he heads a government that encouraged that same impunity," he wrote.<br /><br />"First he filled his office with crooks, then he filled the police with crooks and imbeciles, then he filled the courts with crooks and incompetents."<br /><br />The judge in charge of investigating the murder stepped aside from the case Tuesday following objections from the Caruana Galizia family.<br /><br />Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera had been accused of misconduct by the blogger and had threatened her with libel proceedings.<br /><br />Caruana Galizia's death came four months after Muscat won a landslide victory in elections that were called early after she accused his wife of taking kickbacks from Azerbaijan's ruling family and hiding the cash in a secret Panama bank account.<br /><br />The claims, which Muscat denies, were the latest in a string of scandals based on information leaked from the records of the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca.<br /><br />The so-called Panama Papers revealed how wealthy individuals around the world, including several lawmakers, used shell companies in tax havens to hide cash.<br /><br />Keith Schembri, Muscat's chief of staff, and Konrad Mizzi, a government minister, were both forced to admit having undeclared accounts. But the premier resisted pressure to dismiss them, insisting they had done nothing illegal.</div>