New Facts: Matthew Caruana Galizia testifies on explosion aftermath

Matthew Caruana Galizia told jurors he heard a huge blast just after his mother left the kitchen, ran toward a column of smoke and found metal, fire and body parts on the road. He recognised the burning car by its number plate, tried to call his father and siblings, and could not tell them she was dead. “It was the worst day of my life,” he said.

He said the murder ended his old life and he left his job abroad to fight for accountability, after months of flying home from Paris to help her at night on the Electrogas story. “My work was justice,” he told the court, adding he would accept personal risk “as long as I get justice.” His mother’s laptop was given to the German Federal Police; the family asked them to delete their copies while keeping the originals, and he carried on her investigations.

Jurors were shown an internal Electrogas email sent about an hour after the blast saying people were trying to reach Yorgen Fenech, with a reply to “kindly slow it down at Portomaso. Currently, Yorgen is sick.” He said he later received anonymous scans of cheques and bank statements issued to Fenech from the bank where 17 Black held its account, and confirmed 17 Black was re-registered as Wings Developments in March 2017. He also explained why his searchable leak database stopped at 15 December 2015, saying later material existed on hard drives but had not been indexed before publication.

AI-synthesized from multiple reported sources