Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Alexandra Ragi and I'm in Malta today. It's just over a week since the funeral of Daphne Caruana Galizia. That name will be known to many of you. Daphne was a fierce Maltese journalist who

wrote a searing blog about corruption in her country. She was murdered, assassinated, by a car bomb,

later described as a very professional job. I'm joined for this podcast by Dr. Roberto Martalto,

a criminal defense lawyer here in Valletta. Daphne was

Roberto's client, and she's the sixth of his clients to have been murdered. Thank you for

joining me, Roberto. Thank you. Why don't you start, if you would, you knew and worked with Daphne

for eight years and saw her through three criminal

libel suits rising out of her work, and she was acquitted all three times. So perhaps you can

describe your interaction with her, and we hear people use words like tenacious and fearless

when they describe her, but you knew her and we didn't. Yes, and she was tenacious and fearless when she was writing, but if any one of these people

who were trying to give a description of the person behind the name,

if they ever had the opportunity to meet her like I did, they would realize that she was a very timid person.

She was very docile. She was not imposing. She was in real life, as a person she was a very timid person she was very docile she she was not imposing she was in real life

as a person she was nothing like the person that used to put pen to paper really that's interesting

timid is not a word that she would barely she would barely look at the person she'd be speaking to and not

because she's that proud but just just because she was a very, very

very, very, very, very typical person in real life.

How did you come to be working with her originally?

I remember that she was, a complaint was filed against her by a member of the judiciary,

of the multi-judiciary, and as far as the story goes, at least that is how we talk to me.

Very few members of my profession were willing.

She had one lawyer that used to represent her in all her civil cases.

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