On Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists and six international media freedom and journalist groups issued a joint statement to mark the ninth anniversary of the killing of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and insisted that those responsible for ordering her murder on October 16, 2017, must be brought to justice. 

The prominent investigative journalist and blogger was killed in a car bomb and although five men have been convicted for carrying out the murder or supplying the bomb, no one has been legally held to account for ordering the deadly attack. 

In September, powerful Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech was cleared of masterminding the assassination. Lawyers from Malta’s Office of the Attorney General have filed an appeal.

The joint statement, which also notes the lack of progress on rule of law and media reforms in Malta, laments how full justice remains “painfully elusive.”

Read the letter here.